Mesmerism, Medusa, and the Muse: The Romantic Discourse of Spontaneous Creativity explores the connections among the Romantic discourse of spontaneous literary creativity, the nineteenth-century cultu
This edition provides an insight into the dark areas between Victorian science, medicine and religion. The rare reset source material in this collection is organized thematically and spans the period
Drawing on fresh source material, Fred Kaplan considers the importance From Dickens and Mesmerism of Dickens' involvement with mesmerism for his work and his personality. In so doing he describes a si
Drawing on fresh source material, Fred Kaplan considers the importance From Dickens and Mesmerism of Dickens' involvement with mesmerism for his work and his personality. In so doing he describes a si
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a British writer who was one of the first social theorists to examine all aspects of a society, including class, religion, national character and the status of women. Seriously ill in the early 1840s, she turned to alternative remedies, and underwent a course of mesmerism, to which she attributed her remarkable restoration to health. She published her account of the treatment in a series of letters in the Athenaeum in December 1844, and subsequently in book form, and her cure caused a sensation, adding greatly to public interest in mesmerism. To her fury, her doctor (and brother-in-law) T. M. Greenhow defended his own treatment of her in a remarkably detailed account of her illness, which she regarded as a serious breach of patient confidentiality, and his pamphlet is appended to Martineau's work in this reissue.
