Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain (review)

Alison Winter provides a detailed, highly textured, and above all superbly convincing account of the history of mesmerism in England between the 1830s and 1870s. The foremost achievement of her book is to forever dispel the notion that mesmerism was a marginal practice in Victorian England that did not play a role in the more profound debates at the time. She presents numerous illustrations that appeared in the popular press during the period to show that the basic notions of mesmerism, on which the correct interpretation of these pictures depended, were familiar to the audience that viewed them. Notions derived from mesmerism, she demonstrates, became widely used to describe phenomena as divergent as the commanding role of the conductor before an orchestra or the building of social cohesion. In addition to illustrating the importance of mesmerism in the development of science and medicine, Winter also contributes to the social history of the Victorian era by describing how mesmerism figured in Victorian discussions about predominant issues such as technological change, the nature of social relations, and the foundations of social authority.

In Winter’s account, mesmerism appeared in various guises. In a typical mesmeric session, trance was induced in a subject—most often a woman of lower social standing—during which she became insensitive to pain and startling noises. On cue, the subject proceeded to relate events supposedly occurring miles away, or to deliver messages from those long since dead. Most of the controversy surrounding mesmerism revolved around this second phase, although several physicians had considerable doubt about the verity of the first as well.

Winter details the rather late introduction of mesmerism into English society by traveling lecturers and practitioners in the early 1830s. Their practices were followed with great interest by citizens, physicians, and scientists alike. Mesmerism was taken up by the influential medical reformer John Elliotson, who saw it as a tool for extending therapeutic efficacy and thereby medical authority. After a few successful trials, however, his experiments were ultimately successful only in discrediting him: in a number of rather embarrassing public trials he proved to be unable to keep his mesmerized patients under control—rather than behaving as he had wanted them to, they dispensed medical diagnoses and ridiculed him outright. Elliotson’s opponents considered his patients gullible at best, and frauds at worst. He was forced to resign from the hospital of the University College in London, and mesmerism was (temporarily, at least) banned from its premises.

Mesmerism’s best chance to gain acceptance within the medical community was as a means for anesthetizing patients for surgery—a procedure that did not involve its more controversial aspects, such as clairvoyance—and transforming them into compliant subjects. Many successful surgeries were performed in this way, both in England and by colonial physicians in India in the 1850s. However, just as this practice was beginning to take hold it was superseded by the introduction of ether, which had the advantage of inducing its effect quickly and predictably and lacked the dubious reputation of mesmerism.

The debates around mesmerism played a central role in the formulation of the nature of scientific inquiry, as scientists sought both to exclude such phenomena from the realm of science and to establish their cultural authority over these matters. In Mesmerized, by including the perspectives of physicians, scientists, citizens, and (insofar as available) mesmerized subjects, and by drawing on a wide variety of sources, Winter provides a definitive account of the history of mesmerism in Victorian England.