The Mesmerist - The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound

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.

Product details

• Authors: Wendy Moore, Moore Wendy
• Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.03.2018
• EAN: 9781474602310
• ISBN: 978-1-4746-0231-0
• No. of pages: 311
• Dimensions: 129 mm x 198 mm x 23 mm
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies; MEDICAL / History, History of Medicine, Biography: science, technology & medicine, Biography: science, technology and medicine, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Medical (inc Patients)