Research Catalog
Mesmerist : the society doctor who held Victorian London spellbound
- Title
- Mesmerist : the society doctor who held Victorian London spellbound / Wendy Moore.
- Author
- Moore, Wendy, 1952-
- Publication
- London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017.
- ©2017
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | JFE 17-7479 | Schwarzman Building - Main Reading Room 315 |
Details
- Description
- 308 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 24 cm
- Summary
- Medicine, in the early 1800s, was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. The most surgeons could offer by way of pain relief was a large swig of brandy. Onto this scene came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world. Charismatic and ambitious, Elliotson was determined to transform medicine from a hodge-podge of archaic remedies into a practice informed by the latest science. In this aim he was backed by Thomas Wakley, founder of the new magazine, the Lancet, and a campaigner against corruption and malpractice. Then, in the summer of 1837, a French visitor - the self-styled Baron Jules Denis Dupotet - arrived in London to promote an exotic new idea: mesmerism. The mesmerism mania would take the nation by storm but would ultimately split the two friends, and the medical world, asunder - throwing into focus fundamental questions about the fine line between medicine and quackery, between science and superstition.
- Subjects
- Genre/Form
- Biographies.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-298) and index.
- Call Number
- JFE 17-7479
- ISBN
- 9781474602297
- 1474602290
- 9781474602303
- 1474602304
- OCLC
- 920712586
- Author
- Moore, Wendy, 1952- author.
- Title
- Mesmerist : the society doctor who held Victorian London spellbound / Wendy Moore.
- Publisher
- London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017.
- Copyright Date
- ©2017
- Type of Content
- textstill image
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-298) and index.
- Research Call Number
- JFE 17-7479