The Mesmerist

di Wendy Moore (Autore)

Piers Hampton (Narratore)

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2017

Medicine, in the early 1800s, was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. The most surgeons could offer by way of pain relief was a large swig of brandy. Into this scene came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world. Charismatic and ambitious, Elliotson was determined to transform medicine from a hodge-podge of archaic remedies into a practice informed by the latest science. In this aim he was backed by Thomas Wakley, founder of the new magazine, the Lancet, 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. The mesmerism mania would take the nation by storm but would ultimately split the two friends, and the medical world, asunder - throwing into focus fundamental questions about the fine line between medicine and quackery, between science and superstition. Read by Piers Hampton (p) 2017 Orion Publishing Group

• Autore: Wendy Moore
• Narratore: Piers Hampton
• Durata in (hh:mm:ss): 12:41:21
• Anno edizione: 2017
• Editore: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• EAN: 9781409168065

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