Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in FranceEarly in 1788, Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician, arrived in Paris and began to promulgate a somewhat exotic theory of healing that almost immediately seized the imagination of the general populace. Robert Darnton, in his lively study of mesmerism and its relation to eighteenth-century radical political thought and popular scientific notions, provides a useful contribution to the study of popular culture and the manner in which ideas are diffused down through various social levels. |
Contents
MESMERISM AND POPULAR SCIENCE | 2 |
THE MESMERIST MOVEMENT | 46 |
THE RADICAL STRAIN IN MESMERISM | 82 |
MESMERISM AS A RADICAL POLITICAL THEORY | 106 |
FROM MESMER TO HUGO | 126 |
CONCLUSION | 160 |
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE | 171 |
APPENDIX 1 MESMERS PROPOSITIONS | 177 |
APPENDIX 2 THE MILIEU OF AMATEUR SCIENTISTS IN PARIS | 178 |
APPENDIX 3 THE SOCIETE DE LHARMONIE UNIVERSELLE | 180 |
APPENDIX 4 BERGASSES LECTURES ON MESMERISM | 183 |
APPENDIX 5 THE EMBLEM AND TEXTBOOK OF THE SOCIETES DE LHARMONIE | 186 |
APPENDIX 6 AN ANTIMESMERIST VIEW | 189 |
APPENDIX 7 FRENCH PASSAGES TRANSLATED IN THE TEXT | 193 |
213 | |
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