Hypnotism: Magnetism, Mesmerism, Suggestive Therapeutics and Magnetic Healing

About this book

Magnets, gestures and spoken suggestions once promised remarkable control over pain, feeling and behaviour. L. W. de Laurence assembles these claims into a guide to hypnotism and the practices surrounding it.

Mesmerism and magnetic healing appear beside accounts of suggestion, reflecting the mixed scientific and occult language of the period. The methods and therapeutic claims need modern caution. As history, the book captures a time when experiments in human influence were sold to the public as both practical science and extraordinary personal power.