Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
ISBN: 9780674030190
Platform/Publisher: De Gruyter / Harvard University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Business and Economics; Political Economics; Political Economics other;

"[An] excellent and exemplary study in the history of ideas...Provides a commendable model for those interested in the way 'true' and 'false' ideas interact and broadly influence behavior." -- Science

Early 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.


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