{"product_id":"9781474602297-retail-the-mesmerist-the-society-doctor-who-held-victorian-london-spellbound","title":"The Mesmerist: The Society Doctor Who Held Victorian London Spellbound","description":"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.  Onto 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.","brand":"Book Grocer","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51087912239323,"sku":"9781474602297-RETAIL","price":46.75,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/765f9a50-0f18-4396-a69a-7912e1e5fbb9.jpg?v=1794308913","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/9781474602297-retail-the-mesmerist-the-society-doctor-who-held-victorian-london-spellbound","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}