Dickens's doctor John Elliotson made mesmerism a Victorian craze until UCL banned it

historyWellcome Collection1837 · London, England

Dickens's doctor John Elliotson made mesmerism a Victorian craze until UCL banned it

the gist

John Elliotson was a respected London physician and professor at University College London who, in 1837, began using mesmerism, a technique devised by Franz Mesmer in the late 18th century that induced a trance-like state through hand passes and suggestion. Under it, patients were said to lose sensitivity to pain, which Elliotson promoted as a way to operate without anaesthesia. He invited visitors to witness his demonstrations, and Charles Dickens, who learned the technique himself, became a lifelong enthusiast. Elliotson's dramatic public shows, including ones involving the Okey sisters, drew sensational coverage and sceptical scrutiny from The Lancet. When UCL banned mesmerism, he resigned and continued to practise it privately, founding a London infirmary and a journal called The Zoist.

so what

Elliotson's story shows how a respected doctor could lose his position when a theory was tested and failed. Mesmerism's pain-relief claims were a step toward the anaesthesia era, and his career illustrates the tension between medical innovation and evidence in the nineteenth century.

fun fact

Mesmerism is the origin of the word mesmerised, which still describes being captivated.

more on this

background

John Elliotson (29 October 1791 – 29 July 1868), M.D. (Edinburgh, 1810), M.D.(Oxford, 1821), F.R.C.P.(London, 1822), F.R.S. (1829) was a British doctor who became known for his embrace of hypnotism. He was professor of medicine at University College London (1832), senior physician to University College Hospital (1834) — and, in concert with William Collins Engledue M.D., the co-editor of The Zoist. Elliotson was an author and teacher whose clinical practice and publications were noted by contemporaries. However, his advocacy for the practice of mesmerism were not without controversy.

He was always at the 'leading edge' of his profession: he was one of the first in Britain to use and promote the stethoscope, and one of the first to use acupuncture.

From Wikipedia: John Elliotson (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗

see

Lithographed from a Picture by Jas. Ramsay, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Unknown author, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

key facts

Born: 29 October 1791
Died: 29 July 1868
Known as: physician, university teacher

Facts: Wikidata (CC0)

Wellcome Collection · CC BY 4.0

Illustrative photo · Unknown author, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

source: Wellcome Collection ↗

historyThe Public Domain Review1909 · United States

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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