{"product_id":"mesmerist-book-wendy-moore-9781474602297","title":"The Mesmerist","description":"Medicine, in the early 1800s, was a brutal business. Operations were performed without anaesthesia while conventional treatment relied on leeches, cupping and toxic potions. The most surgeons could offer by way of pain relief was a large swig of brandy.   Onto this scene came John Elliotson, the dazzling new hope of the medical world. Charismatic and ambitious, Elliotson was determined to transform medicine from a hodge-podge of archaic remedies into a practice informed by the latest science. In this aim he was backed by Thomas Wakley, founder of the new magazine, the Lancet, and a campaigner against corruption and malpractice.  Then, in the summer of 1837, a French visitor - the self-styled Baron Jules Denis Dupotet - arrived in London to promote an exotic new idea: mesmerism. The mesmerism mania would take the nation by storm but would ultimately split the two friends, and the medical world, asunder - throwing into focus fundamental questions about the fine line between medicine and quackery, between science and superstition.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49527972593937,"sku":"GOR008268113","price":11.69,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50302970396945,"sku":"CIN1474602290G","price":11.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50764089098513,"sku":"CIN1474602290VG","price":11.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52726372335889,"sku":"GOR008247068","price":11.69,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1474602290.jpg?v=1751052669","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/mesmerist-book-wendy-moore-9781474602297","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}