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.
| ISBN: | 9780674569515 |
| Publication date: | 1st January 1986 |
| Author: | Robert Darnton |
| Publisher: | Harvard University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 232 pages |
| Genres: |
Social and cultural history History of ideas |