Mental Suggestion

A review from The Medical Current, Volume 8: Hypnotism is now a word much upon the public lips; it has superseded the worn out and mouldy term of animal magnetism. Beyond a doubt the subject of hypnotism at present involves whatever of truth there was in the former doctrines of a Mesmer and his host of satellites. We say beyond a doubt in the minds of many individuals, but here is an author who maintains that hypnotism and animal magnetism, though they have certain...
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A review from The Medical Current, Volume 8:

Hypnotism is now a word much upon the public lips; it has superseded the worn out and mouldy term of animal magnetism. Beyond a doubt the subject of hypnotism at present involves whatever of truth there was in the former doctrines of a Mesmer and his host of satellites. We say beyond a doubt in the minds of many individuals, but here is an author who maintains that hypnotism and animal magnetism, though they have certain superficial resemblances are radically different from each other in their phenomena and in the modes of their production, and that the facts of magnetism are incomparably the more wonderful and the more worthy of scientific study. The title of the work, Mental Suggestion, well marks the difference between hypnotism and magnetism. In hypnotism mental suggestion is not to be thought of, but that it exists in animal magnetism is the task of this author to prove.

The writer of this book is in every way competent to treat the subject; he is a learned physiologist and physicist, as well as a psychologist, and he has studied the matter experimentally for years. He has mastered all the literature of hypnotism and animal magnetism; his book contains an enormous amount of information nowhere else accessible outside of the greatest libraries. Just because Ochorowicz first explored the ground thoroughly on his own account and then sifted the bibliography of magnetism, he is able to estimate the true value of the work of prior experimenters, students, and theorizers.

It is simple truth to say that no student of human psychology can afford to neglect this most able and brilliant treatise - a work original in its method in its point of view, and possessing moreover all the charms of a consummate literary style - in other words, consummate simplicity and clearness of expression. It is unquestionably the completest work on magnetism and hypnotism ever written; no author so well equipped for the discussion of the question ever attempted it before.