When is a "fringe science" not a fringe science? The answer may depend less on the longevity or even the pedigree of ideas than it does on the general popularity and the usefulness of those ideas to professional scientists. Many historians [e.g., W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter] have recently pointed to the vague borders between "fringe" and "orthodoxy" in the development of medical sciences, while others [e.g., Graham Richards, 1992] have recorded some of the false starts in the evolution of psychology. The "march of the intellect" has always encompassed some quackery and a number of cranks, and the historian has always faced risks in deciding what was truly central and what was marginal in the scientific beliefs of any period.
As Alison Winter reminds us in Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain, the malleable [if not confused] definitions of science and scientific procedures persisted well into the nineteenth century. The carefully demarcated academic disciplines, the professional journals and societies, the updated education and laboratories, the acceptance of professional and governmental regulations -these features of modern science become significant only after 1815. Until the new structures were firmly in place [Winter suggests 1870 as the effective time for this], almost anyone could participate in scientific enquiry, including phrenologists, clairvoyants, and mesmerists. In this golden age of pseudo-science, mesmerism had a special place because it was enormously popular and had an apparent potential for solving age-old puzzles about the mind and the relationship of the mind with external physical forces. And, as Winter properly notes, mesmerism flourished in the almost unique [if transitory] context of experiments with ether, opium, and electricity and as an integral part of the contemporary literature of dreams, spiritualism, and human progress [26, 33, 38].
The story of Victorian mesmerism is essentially one of debate and controversy, support and hostility. Winter succeeds in showing how disruptive the claims of "animal magnetism" really were, both for the men of science and the public at large. Of course it was possible, at least initially, to dismiss mesmerism as phrenology was dismissed, viz., as a foreign import; it was also condemned as a home-grown, late Regency form of "decadence and lascivious quackery" [41]. But committees of medical scientists could not always agree about mesmerism, and not a few medicos followed the example of Dr. John Elliotson, the flamboyant champion of medical reform and innovation, who popularized the stethoscope and used mesmerism to gain information and compliance from his patients. Mesmerists were probably most provocative when they combined the notions of mesmerism with those of clairvoyancy, although there was never any shortage of famous persons [Dickens, Cruikshank, and Archbishop Whately among them], who accepted the "magic" of mesmerism as a valid key to understanding human behavior. And what did the controversial demonstrations of mesmerism involve? Winter provides us with several intriguing accounts, commendably presented with tongue in cheek. These stories are successful not only for recapturing the Victorians' sense of magic, but also for making empirical use of long-neglected historical materials.