That devil's trick is the first study of nineteenth-century hypnotism
based primarily on the popular - rather than medical - appreciation of
the subject. Drawing on the reports of mesmerists, hypnotists, quack
doctors and serious physicians printed in popular newspapers from the
early years of the nineteenth century to the Victorian fin de siècle,
the book provides an insight into how continental mesmerism was first
understood in Britain, how a number of distinctively British varieties
of mesmerism developed, and how these were continually debated in
medical, moral and legal terms.
Highly relevant to the study of the many authors - Charles Dickens,
George Eliot, Bram Stoker and Conan Doyle among them - whose fiction was
informed by the imagery of mesmerism, That devil's trick will be an
essential resource for anybody with an interest in the popular and
literary culture of the nineteenth century, including literary scholars,
medical historians and the general reader.