Facts in Mesmerism, with Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry into It (Cambridge Library Collection - Spiritualism and Esoteric Knowledge) - Softcover

Townshend, Chauncy Hare

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108025897 ISBN 13: 9781108025898

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Chauncy Hare Townshend (1798-1868), poet and collector, was a well-connected friend of Robert Southey and Charles Dickens. He became fascinated with Mesmerism while in Germany and went on to popularise it in England. This book, first published in 1840, was his passionate defence of Mesmerism. Developed in the late eighteenth century by Franz Mesmer, Mesmerism was a kind of hypnosis based on the theory of animal magnetism. With its spiritual associations and uncanny effects, it was an extremely controversial topic in the nineteenth century and its practitioners were widely considered fraudsters. Townshend describes in detail the mental states Mesmerism induces, which he identifies as similar to a state of sleepwalking. Perhaps most fascinating are the eye-witness accounts describing experiments carried out by Townshend on the continent, in which he hypnotised his subjects into feeling his own sensations and knowing things they could not know.

About this title

Book Description:

A passionate defence of Mesmerism, a kind of hypnosis based on the theory of animal magnetism, first published in 1840 by one of its most prominent nineteenth-century practitioners, a friend of Dickens. Townshend includes eye-witness accounts of hypnotic experiments, both from the subject's and the Mesmeriser's viewpoint.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1108025897
• ISBN 13: 9781108025898
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 598