From: Cross Currents | Date: December 22, 1999| Author: BEHR, KATE | COPYRIGHT 1999 Association for Religion and Intellectual Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 451pp. $30.00 (cloth).

There is something titillating about mesmerism, as the jacket illustration of Alison Winter's book clearly shows. A buxom, young, white woman in her underclothes is propped, eyes closed, in a chair; her head is flung back, exposing her neck and partially revealing her bosom; luxuriant, golden, curly locks fall unconfined to her wai...