# The Mesmerist

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/wendy-moore/the-mesmerist/9781474602310

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![The Mesmerist](https://quivercdn.com/covers/w-n/wendy-moore/the-mesmerist_978-14-7460-231-0.jpg?v=2026-05-19%2019%3A35%3A11)

- Book: [The Mesmerist](https://www.bookquiver.com/wendy-moore/the-mesmerist) ([The Mesmerist.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/wendy-moore/the-mesmerist.md))
- Authors: [Wendy Moore](https://www.bookquiver.com/wendy-moore)
- Publisher: W N
- ISBN: 978-14-7460-231-0
- Published: 2018-03-08
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

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, theLancet, 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.