Science Stories: Series 3 - Mesmerism and Parapsychology
The showmanship of Anton Mesmer and the rise and fall of animal magnetism.
Anton Mesmer was a doctor who claimed he could cure people with an unknown force of animal magnetism. He was the subject to a committee that found there was no evidence for his powers. Phil Ball tallks to Simon Shaffer, Professor of History of Science at Cambridge University, about the rise of showmanship in science at the time of Mesmer in the later 18th Century, and to Professor Richard Wiseman of Hertfordshire University about contemporary parapsychology.
Image: 1784: Franz Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1734 -1815) Austrian doctor known for inducing a trance-like state, called mesmerism, Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Last on
More episodes
Broadcasts
- Mon 2 Jan 2017 19:32GMT大象传媒 World Service East and Southern Africa & West and Central Africa only
- Mon 2 Jan 2017 20:32GMT大象传媒 World Service UK DAB/Freeview, Online, Europe and the Middle East, Americas and the Caribbean & Australasia only
- Mon 2 Jan 2017 21:32GMT大象传媒 World Service East Asia & South Asia only
- Tue 3 Jan 2017 02:32GMT大象传媒 World Service Americas and the Caribbean
- Tue 3 Jan 2017 03:32GMT大象传媒 World Service UK DAB/Freeview, Online & Europe and the Middle East only
- Tue 3 Jan 2017 04:32GMT大象传媒 World Service South Asia & East Asia only
- Tue 3 Jan 2017 05:32GMT大象传媒 World Service Australasia
- Tue 3 Jan 2017 07:32GMT大象传媒 World Service East and Southern Africa & Europe and the Middle East only
Space
The eclipses, spacecraft and astronauts changing our view of the Universe
The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry
A pair of scientific sleuths answer your perplexing questions. Ask them anything!
Podcast
-
![]()
Discovery
Explorations in the world of science.
