Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
book · 1968
LINK
SUMMARY
The canonical modern scholarly study of Mesmer's practice in its French intellectual, social, and political context. Darnton (then a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows) demonstrated that mesmerism in Paris was less a curiosity of medical history than a major intellectual and political phenomenon: the Société de l'Harmonie Universelle drew together Enlightenment radicals, prerevolutionary political dissidents, and the wealthy Parisian elite, and the 1784 royal commission's disconfirmation was as much a political-cultural event as a clinical one. Darnton's book is the appropriate scholarly reference for any modern discussion of the case and the standard departure point for further research.
NOTES
Darnton’s 1968 monograph is the canonical modern scholarly study of Mesmer and is widely regarded as one of the foundational works of the cultural history of science. It is the appropriate citation for any modern evidence-based discussion of the case, both in its narrow medical-history dimension (the 1784 disconfirmation as the founding case of blinded clinical investigation) and in its wider intellectual-history dimension (mesmerism as a vehicle through which Enlightenment scientific authority, popular fashion, and prerevolutionary political thought intersected in late-18th-century Paris). The book remains in print and is available through Harvard University Press.