Item #62118 Mesmerism, Spiritualism, & etc. Historically and Scientifically considered; being two lectures delivered at the London Institution. William B. - Inscribed CARPENTER.
Mesmerism, Spiritualism, & etc. Historically and Scientifically considered; being two lectures delivered at the London Institution
Mesmerism, Spiritualism, & etc. Historically and Scientifically considered; being two lectures delivered at the London Institution

Mesmerism, Spiritualism, & etc. Historically and Scientifically considered; being two lectures delivered at the London Institution

London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1877. First Edition. Hardcover. Small octavo. xiv + 158pp + 32pp publisher's catalog. Brown cloth with gilt titling to spine, black rules and device to upper board, appendices. This copy inscribed by the author on the half title page: ".......from his friend the author". The recipients name is unclear, but appears to be "T. H. Huxley." Two lectures by William Benjamin Carpenter (1813-1885) was an English physiologist biologist, and naturalist, long-term registrar of the University of London, and one of the founders of the modern theory of the adaptive unconscious. He was highly skeptical about Spiritualism and Mesmerism, and wrote these essays "to show, first, the relation of what seems to me essentiallly an Epidemic Delusion, to Epidemics, more or less similar, which have at different periods taken a strong - though transient - hold on the popular imagination: and secondly, to point out how completely the evidence adduced by the upholders of the system fails to afford a scientific proof of the existence of any new Power or Agency capable of antagonising the action of the known Forces of Nature." A well researched and fascinating, if highly critical, study. From the collection of Dr. M. H. Coleman, with his ex-libris blind seal on front blank. Corners bumped, corners and spine ends a bit chafed, very slight chipping to cloth upper spine, front endpapers slightly split at inner hinge, pages slightly toned, unmarked. Overall a tight, clean VG copy. Item #62118

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