The Mesmerist - The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound (Hardcover)

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.

General

Imprint:	Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	April 2017
First published:	2017
Authors:	Wendy Moore
Dimensions:	238 x 160 x 29mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	320
ISBN-13:	978-1-4746-0229-7
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Biography & autobiography > Science, technology & engineering Books > Medicine > General issues > History of medicine Books > Biography > Science, technology & engineering Promotions
LSN:	1-4746-0229-0
Barcode:	9781474602297

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