The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound
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- Synopsis
- 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. Into 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.Read by Piers Hampton(p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group
- Copyright:
- 2017
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9781409168065
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781474602303, 9781474602297, 9781474602310
- Publisher:
- Orion
- Date of Addition:
- 03/30/22
- Copyrighted By:
- Wendy Moore
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Narrated By:
- Piers Hampton
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.