Preview
  • The Mesmerist

  • The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound
  • By: Wendy Moore
  • Narrated by: Piers Hampton
  • Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Mesmerist

By: Wendy Moore
Narrated by: Piers Hampton
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $25.00

Buy for $25.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Medicine in the early 1800s was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. It was said of one surgeon, 'His surgical acquirements were very small, his operations generally very badly performed and accompanied with much bungling, if not worse.' It was lucky, for the doctor at least, that his deafness made him immune to his patients' dying groans.

Into this milieu came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world. Charismatic and ambitious, Elliotson was determined to transform medicine from a medieval hodgepodge of archaic remedies into a practice informed by the latest science. In this aim he was backed by Thomas Wakley, founder of the new Lancet magazine 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. It was a trend that would take the nation by storm but would ultimately split the two friends, and the medical world, asunder, throwing into sharp focus fundamental questions about the line between medicine and quackery, between science and superstition.

©2017 Wendy Moore (P)2017 Orion Publishing Group
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about The Mesmerist

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.