The Mesmerists Inquire About Oriental Mind Powers-West Meets East in The Search For The Universal Trance

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Vol.
46(1), 1–26 Winter 2010

Published online in Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/jhbs.20393
© 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
THE MESMERISTS INQUIRE ABOUT “ORIENTAL MIND POWERS”:

WEST MEETS EAST IN THE SEARCH FOR THE UNIVERSAL TRANCE
DAVID T. SCHMIT
Contemporary interest in Asian meditation raises questions about when Westerners began
investigating these practices. A synopsis of Western-originating scientific meditation
research is followed by a brief introduction to mesmerism. Next, the unappreciated ways
the mesmerists explored Oriental mind powers is recounted. How the mesmerists’ cultural
positioning, philosophy, and interest in mind–body practices facilitated their inquiries of
Oriental medicine and Hindu contemplative practices is explored, followed by a consider-
ation of why these investigations were unique for the era. The way this work subverted
Western cultural imperialism is examined. A consideration of the historical continuities
and discontinuities between the mesmerists’ inquiries and twentieth-century meditation
research concludes the article. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
INTRODUCTION
In March of 1970, Swami Rama (1925–1996), the former head of Karvirpitham
Monastery in India, walked into the prestigious Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, to un-
dergo a series of physiological tests. On staff at the Menninger was psychophysiologist and
pioneer of biofeedback research Elmer Green. After a number of assessments, Green discov-
ered that Rama possessed a remarkable ability to control autonomic nervous system functions
such as heart rate, respiration, and body temperature. To his surprise, Rama reported that there
were many yogis in India with even more exceptional powers of mind–body control. Curious
about such claims, Green, accompanied by his wife Alice and a small team of researchers,
headed off to India to investigate (Green & Green, 1977; Tigunait, 1998).
In order to effectively conduct his research in the field, Green constructed a portable
psychophysiological lab. On the shores of the Ganges River in Rishikesh, in the foothills of
the Himalayas, an eye-catching episode in East–West history was made as Green hooked up
meditating yogis to his electrode-bearing machine. In another phase of their Indian research
trip, Green, along with A. V. S. S. Rama Rao, of Venkateswara Medical College in Tirupati,
conducted an equally memorable investigation of another ascetic, Yogiraja Vaidyaraja (aka
“the burying yogi”). The contemplative was placed in a small airtight box that allowed him to
assume a meditative pose and then was physiologically monitored. Green gave the yogi two
hours at best, and then “simply waited with growing admiration of his abilities as the after-
noon wore on” (Green & Green, 1977, pp. 262, 268). For extended periods, the Yogiraja low-
ered his respiration to four breaths a minute. He lasted over seven hours, a duration that would
have suffocated a normal person. Green’s encounter with these meditating monks represents
DAVID SCHMIT is Professor of Psychology at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, Minnesota. He re-
ceived his PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Minnesota. His research interests
address the development of metaphysical, medical, scientific, and psychological subcultures in the nine-
teenth century and views of human nature that emerged from these groups. The material presented in this
article is part of a project investigating mesmerism in America. Research supported by the Carol Easley
Denny Award for Faculty Research, 2004-5, St. Catherine’s University, and by Richard and Dorothy
Taylor. Address correspondence to David Schmit, St. Catherine’s University, 2004 Randolph Avenue, Box
4096, St. Paul, MN. 55105, USA. E-mail: dtschmit@stkate.edu.
1
2 DAVID T. SCHMIT
a most intriguing corner of cross-cultural exchange: Western scientist meets Eastern yogi.1
The unique character of this form of psychological research and the historic events which
preceded this encounter are the foci of this article.
The article is organized as follows. Part 1 presents a brief overview of the development
of western scientifically inspired research of Asian meditation practice. Part 2 provides an in-
troduction to mesmerism, followed by an examination of the mesmerists’ investigations of
Oriental medicine and Hindu religio–mind–body practices. In order to historically situate
these Asian inquiries, highlights of the West’s exploration of Asian high culture in the late
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are woven through this section. Three main conclusions
will be drawn: One, the mesmerists were unique among their mid-nineteenth-century peers in
their fascination with Asian mind–body contemplative practices and related phenomena. Two,
the mesmerists’ positioning within mid-century Victorian culture drew them to the Asian
“other” in a way that challenged prevailing European and American beliefs of racial and cul-
tural superiority. And three, the similarities between the mesmerists’ inquiries and contempo-
rary meditation research suggests that the mesmerists are the mid-nineteenth-century
precursors to contemporary Asian meditation research in the West.
Before proceeding, a caveat regarding representations of East and West. Edward Said
(1935–2003) is widely recognized for advancing a critical analysis of the topic through his
book Orientalism (1978). For this article, a post-Saidian, modified Orientalism will be
adopted, which approaches East and West as social constructions.2 The treatment of these two
regions as historically and geographically bifurcated will be maintained, however, as an act of
historicism, because the personages under study treated them as such.3 In this modernist,
Western-centered “imagining of the East,” Asia beckons. Select Westerners, acting as explor-
ers and translators, advanced novel ways to understand “the puzzle of the Orient,” and thus
facilitated the diffusion of Asian culture to the West. The effect was to transform Westerners’
understanding of themselves and their world (Clarke, 1997; Rubies, 2000, pp. x–xi). That
these processes of diffusion were conjoined to imperialism, ethnocentrism, and exploitation
1. Green wasn’t the first Westerner to use electrophysiological equipment to study the mind–body control of Indian
yogis. In 1935, French cardiologist Therese Brosse visited India and used an electrocardiograph to examine yogis
capable of controlling heart rate. India’s Swami Kuvalayananda founded an ashram and laboratory, called Lonavla,
near Bombay (Mumbai) in the 1920s to systematically investigate the spiritual and health benefits of yoga. There
were Indians using electrophysiological equipment to study meditation by the 1950s (Murphy & Donovan, 1999,
pp. 33–36).
2. Edward Said (1978, p. 27) drew on Foucault’s “knowledge/power” critique (Clarke, 1997, p. 24) to assert that
nearly all Western-authored literature about the Orient (and a great many Eastern-authored works) are contaminated
with the effects of colonial domination, in that the power of definition and modalities of analysis are construed to
follow Western-originating schemata. In effect, Said claimed that the work of generations of Oriental scholars, rather
than hewing toward objective representations of Asia, was imperialistically biased. After Said, developments in post-
colonial studies, subaltern studies, and cultural discourse theory expanded, modified, and in some cases, rejected
Said’s original thesis, turning the history of Orientalism into contested terrain. These more recent works present a
picture of Western inquiries of Asian cultures as considerably more dynamic and heterogeneous than Said’s more
static and “homologous” rendering (Breckenridge & van der Veer, 1993, pp. 3–12; Clarke, 1997, Chapters 1 and 2;
Hadfield, 2001, p. 1; Leask, 1992, p. 2; Lowe, 1991, Chapter 1; MacKenzie, 1995, pp. 20–21; Rocher, 1991,
pp. 215–249; Tavakoli-Targhi, 2003). As J. J. Clarke (1997, p. 4) observes, Said’s attempt to frame the centuries-old
West–East encounter solely in terms of power and domination fails to capture the shifting attitudes and plurality of
views that inform these meetings.
3. Said (1978) pointed out that the “cultural distance” between Europe, America, and Asia is a concoction by Western
intelligentsia. He also critiqued the false unity and blindness to regional diversity of geographic locators such as
“West,” “East,” or “Asia.” Nevertheless, even Said acknowledges that, as historical and geographical divisions, the
bifurcation retains some value. On a related note, Said was primarily referring to the Near East in his analysis,
whereas this article focuses on India and China. For a discussion that addresses the ways Said’s Orientalism critique
extends to the entire Orient, see Clarke (1997, pp. 22–24).
JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES DOI: 10.1002/jhbs

ORIENTAL MIND POWERS 3
is assumed. Moreover, these “pioneers” drew from and typically appropriated—often without
attribution—material provided by Asian informants and intellectuals (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2003).
Insight into the ways explorers and translators appropriated Asian materials is advanced by
making explicit their positioning in Western culture, vis à vis historical era, class, ethnicity,
gender, and so on (Lowe, 1991, p. 8). Of particular interest is the way Asian philosophy and
cultural practices subverted Western hegemony and in some cases how it regenerated
elements of Western culture (Clarke, 1997, pp. 6, 27, 227, note 9; Mackenzie, 1995, p. 10;
Roszak, 1969, Chapter 4; Young, 1990, p. 140). Finally, in contrast to this Western-centric nar-
rative is the Eastern-centered story of Asians’ engagement with the West (i.e., the history of
East-meets-West). That account is not addressed in this article.4
MEDITATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN THE WEST

The strands of influence informing the transport of Asian meditative practice to the West
are varied: academic scholars of Asian religion, philosophers, freelance writers, and artists
(such as late nineteenth-century theosophists and twentieth-century Beat poets); Western
pilgrims traipsing through the monasteries, temples, and zendos of India, Thailand, and Japan;
Asian ethnic communities in the U.S. and the Asian teachers willing to transmit their knowl-
edge to Westerners. Central features of this history are wrapped up in the 1960s, including the
1965 repeal of anti-immigration laws, which allowed scores of Asian missionaries to enter
the U.S. and begin their teaching of contemplative practices.5 It also includes the postwar gen-
eration’s psychedelic drug explorations (Dass, 1971; Fields, 1992, p. 250; Stevens, 1987;
Storlie, 1996), the pursuit of humanistic psychology–inspired “peak experiences” (Maslow,
1972), and the emergence of Esalen-type personal growth centers (Alexander, 1992, p. 42;
Anderson, 1983; Schwartz, 1996, Chapter 2). These elements interacted to set the stage for
the rapid expansion of meditation practice in the 1970s.6 Western laboratory-based research
on meditation proceeded concurrently, and in many ways depended on popular interest gen-
erated by these spiritually and psychologically oriented movements. The classic dissemination
model wherein university-housed research “trickles down” to the general public does not ac-
curately represent this history. At the same time, scientific meditation research was contingent
4. For discussions of the history of East-meets-West from an Asian-centric view, see the essays in Breckenridge and
van der Veer (1993), Kaiwar and Mazumdar (2003), and the work of Chakrabarty (1992), Knopf (1969), and Prakash
(1999).
5. The extent to which early-twentieth-century U.S. psychologists, armed with nativistic interpretations of immi-
grants’ low intelligence test scores, helped persuade Congress to pass immigration laws is a matter of debate. Henry
Herbert Goddard (1866–1957), Lewis Terman (1877–1956), and Robert Yerkes (1876–1956) have been implicated.
For a discussion see Gelb (1986), Gould (1996, pp. 187–204), Snyderman and Herrnstein (1983), and Zenderland
(1998, pp. 315, 418, n.6). In the hands of government officials, these findings were used to inflame nationalistic sen-
sibilities antagonistic towards immigration. Congress responded to the popular resentments by creating an “Asian
barred zone” in 1917, followed by the Asian Exclusion Act of 1924. After the enactment of these laws, immigration
and travel of people from Asia to the United States slowed to a trickle. Tweed and Prothero (1999, pp. 159–160)
declare that the effect was to set Asian religious traditions in the U.S. “adrift.”
6. The literature linking the 1960s, Asian philosophy, meditation, psychedelics, and the human potential movement
together is large; the books listed represent a small selection. For a description of Esalen founder Michael Murphy’s
involvement in Asian meditation practice, see Schwarz (1996, Chapter 2). According to Alexander (1992, p. 42),
Esalen served as a prototype for other personal growth centers, which spread across the country and by one estimate,
today number in the hundreds. According to biographer, Edward Hoffman (1988, p. 93), Maslow was a reader of
Asian philosophy. A related humanistically oriented movement, the Association for Transpersonal Psychology
(1969–present) has made the study of “altered states of consciousness” its sine quo non and a mainstay are studies
of Asian meditation practices. See the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology.

4 DAVID T. SCHMIT
upon the creation of instruments that measure subtle physiological and neural changes.7 The
raw empirical data provided by these machines compliments meditators’ reports of the bene-
fits of the practice.
According to Michael Murphy and Steven Donovan (1999), the first scientific research
on meditation located in the West began in 1937 with Kovoor Benahan (1937), an Indian stu-
dent at Yale University. Since that date, periodic investigations of meditation have been
mounted in Europe, India, Japan, and the United States, with the bulk of the work performed
in the last three decades. A major breakthrough in lab-based research occurred in 1975 when
Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson introduced the relaxation response (1975). Benson dis-
covered that after a period of meditation, when the mind becomes more quiescent, the body
releases a biological response that induces a reduction in overall metabolism, including fairly
dramatic decreases in muscle tension, heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen consumption.
Since Benson’s discovery, the relaxation response has become a useful construct in the study
and management of stress.
By the 1980s, a host of medical and psychological benefits were being attributed to med-
itation practice. Clinically, meditation was achieving success treating stress-related diseases
and anxiety-related disorders, in chronic pain management, and in treatment for addictions.
Theoretical foundations advanced as well, incorporating cognitive-behavioral and health psy-
chology formulations into the expanding “meditation database” (Taylor, 1999a). Reviews and
bibliographies of the scientific literature ensued. (Austen, 2006; Jarrel, 1985; Monro,
Gosh, & Kailash, 1989; Murphy & Donovan, 1999). Through this work, meditation gradually
became a more acceptable topic of scientific research in Western laboratories. A sign of aca-
demic psychology’s acceptance is the inclusion of the topic in many introductory psychology
texts.
Recent innovations promise even more advances. Tibetan Buddhist meditation experts
are being examined under the fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) device while in
advanced meditative states. Meditation, it turns out, is a unique neural brain state that can be
mapped with this instrument. Expert meditators’ ability to finely control breath, emotions,
and attentional states has aroused the interest of prominent research psychologists at presti-
gious universities (Begley, 2007; Davidson & Harrington, 2001; Dingfelder, 2003). Tibet’s
sacred leader-in-exile, Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, has shown a ready interest
in these matters, hosting research conferences (Boyce, 2005; Houshmand, Livingston, &
Wallace, 1999) and even speaking at the Society for Neuroscience’s national conference, an
unprecedented invitation for a religious figure at a scientific meeting (Fields, 2006). Medi-
tation research has inadvertently fostered cross-cultural discourse and face-to-face encounters
between Westerners and Asian contemplatives.
Given the research findings and glowing reports from practitioners, it is not surprising
that Americans have heeded the promise of meditation. An estimated ten million people in the
U.S. regularly meditate (Stein, 2003). Many more have encountered derivatives (such as
mindfulness practice) in schools, universities, churches, major corporations, nursing homes,
prisons, and the psychotherapist’s office. In secular settings, it is used primarily for its thera-
peutic stress reduction and “mind-clarifying” relaxation benefits (Gravois, 2005; Hall, 2003).
Western scientifically inspired research on meditation is now over 70 years old. A sub-
stantial body of internationally gathered evidence supports the proposition that the meditative
state can be understood naturalistically as a neurobiological condition that imparts a host of
7. For examinations of the role these kinds of instruments have played in the history of psychology, see Rosler
(2005), Sokal, Davis, and Merzbach (1976), and Sturm and Ash (2005).

physical and psychological benefits to practitioners. Most remarkable is the speed at which a
practice enshrined by thousands of years of monastic practice has been stripped of its reli-
gious piety and spiritual meanings. The result: a near complete secular reformulation. Such a
striking diffusion of a distinctly Asian religious practice into the West provokes a historical
inquiry. When did Westerners first look to the East and wonder about Asian meditation prac-
tice? Before turning to this story, an introduction to mesmerism is in order.
THE MESMERISTS’ ORIENTAL INQUIRIES

Mesmeric Practice and Culture
Within the history of psychology, mesmerism is situated in the fertile period prior to the
emergence of the academic discipline. Exactly how the practice contributed to the late-
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultural currents moving toward the institutionalization of
the field is still being understood. Clearly, however, the mesmerists’ work, as described below,
embodies larger trends linked to the legitimization of human science: advances in scientific
methodologies, the gradual recalibration of human nature in the direction of naturalistic for-
mulations, the secularization of the body, and the reconfiguration of metaphysical mind to-
ward more purely psychological models. Just as significantly, mesmeric phenomena forced
investigators to grapple with the mind–body problem, with which meditation researchers
would also struggle a century and a half later. This leads to questions about the origins of mes-
merism and to the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734–1815), who introduced his
multipurpose curative in 1767.
In formulating the cure’s all-pervading active healing agent, animal magnetism, Mesmer
drew from older European vitalistic theories; to modernize the practice and to give his sys-
tem scientific imprimatur, he attempted to describe the substance naturalistically, in terms of
Newtonian gravitational forces and magnetics. Despite achieving remarkable cures, since
magnetism was not perceivable by the senses and relied on unseen “forces” as its active agent,
Mesmer was rebuked and accused of fakery and sorcery. After official inquisitions, many
skeptical medical and scientific elites concluded that imagination and imitation were the real
so-called “healing” agents in Mesmer’s cure. Controversy and a good deal of confusion fol-
lowed the iconoclastic therapy thereafter (Crabtree, 1993; Gauld, 1992; Pattie, 1994).
Mesmerism was revitalized in 1784 when his student, the Marquis de Puységur
(1751–1825) discovered that “magnetizing” a patient could induce a state of trance, which he
called magnetic somnambulism. Puységur and his students systematized induction procedures
into a sequence of arm and hand movements around the patient’s head and body, called “mag-
netic passes.” More accusations of occultism by elites ensued when mesmerists proposed that
magnetism initiated the entranced into a realm of superior mental powers and clairvoyant per-
ceptions (Crabtree, 1993).
Regardless of the disdain of prominent critics, by the late 1830s, mesmerism had
gained a foothold in Western Europe and America, where its practice consolidated along
three lines: (1) mesmeric medical treatments, which sometimes included somnambulism
and at other times merely involved the manipulation of “magnetism”; (2) psychologically
oriented examinations of the trance; and (3) metaphysical inquiries of trance-induced clair-
voyance, religious experiences, and spiritualist-type communications (adapted from
Colquhoun, 1836).
Mesmerism’s heyday in the U.S. occurred in the 1840s, when a select group of liberal
ministers, maverick physicians, and phrenologists developed expertise in the practice.

6 DAVID T. SCHMIT
They plied their trade in medical clinics and in lecture halls, and published dozens of titles
(Schmit, 2005). A similar diffusion of the practice occurred in England, as documented by
Allison Winter (1998). The mesmerists’ public programs were enormously popular, and they
became regular fixtures on the national lecture circuit. In these lecture–expositions, trance
induction was often presented as a “mental operation,” and offered as a provocative tool for
advancing knowledge, while mesmeric phenomena were increasingly linked to the domain
of “psychology” and presented as representative of a “science of the soul” (Dods, 1850;
Haddock, 1849). Following previous generations of mesmerists, mid-century practitioners be-
lieved that they were conducting legitimate scientific experiments in their public expositions,
although the empirical quality and methodological sophistication of their investigations var-
ied substantially (Schmit, 2005).
Mesmerism had an extensive affiliation with phrenology, but it was most effective as an
alternative to nineteenth-century orthodox medicine. By mid-century, mesmerists were treat-
ing, with some efficacy, Victorian “nervous disorders,” providing help to those in the grip of
addictions, and teaching methods of pain control (especially for surgical patients) (Gauld,
1992). Respected members of the medical orthodoxy, however, either refuted the claims or
rejected its medical philosophy (Drake, 1844; Mitchell, 1859; Reese, 1837; Winter, 1998).
Nevertheless, due to its popularity in print, in exposition, and in the clinic, tens of thousands
of Americans and Europeans—and likely a great many more—encountered mesmerism.
Eventually, the growth of profiteering and charlatanry damaged mesmerism’s reputation
(Fuller, 1982; Schmit, 2005; Winter, 1998). This, combined with orthodox physician rejec-
tions and accusations of occultism by some elites, left the mesmerists struggling to overcome
the role of “outsiders.” Yet their campaign for power and prestige, when joined with the
captivating properties of the trance, set in motion intellectual and cultural currents that shaped
the nineteenth century. Indeed, mesmerism’s offerings were absorbed into three religious
movements,8 five therapeutic systems (such as clinical hypnosis and psychotherapy),9 and it
appears in numerous literary works.10 Elements of mesmerism were absorbed into psychical
research (Angoff, 1968; Berloff, 1997; Gauld, 1992), mind–body medicine (Harrington,
2008), and it played a pioneering role in the psychology of consciousness (Crabtree, 1993;
Schmit, 2005). One of the least appreciated of the mesmerists’ contributions was their inter-
est in ancient and non-Western healing practices and religious states.
Mesmerist Views of the History of Their Practice
From their earliest publications, the mesmerists claimed that their method was a revival
of an ancient healing art. In this light, Mesmer was seen more as a courageous modernizer
rather than as an original thinker. This link to bygone eras was conceived in the broadest pos-
sible terms, as described by early mesmeric philosopher, Jacque Cambry (1784, p. 11), who
speculated, “it seems evident to me that what the ancients called the spirit, we call magnetism.”
In 1787, another early advocate of this view, the Count of Mellet, tried to frame the origins
of mesmerism biblically, as in an “Adamic medicine.” Ancient “antediluvian people” knew of
8. Religious movements that absorbed features of mesmerism: Christian Science (Peel, 1966; Podmore, 1909), New
Thought (Braden, 1963; Dresser, 1899), and Spiritualism (Braude, 1989; Carroll, 1997; Podmore, 1902).
9. Therapeutic systems that absorbed elements of mesmerism: hypnosis (Gauld, 1992), psychotherapy (Caplan,
1998; Cushman, 1992; Fuller, 1987a), chiropractic (Fuller, 1987b; Gielow, 1981), osteopathy (Gevitz, 1982), and
eclectic medicine (Haller, 1994).
10. Nineteenth-century authors who addressed mesmerism in their writings include Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, Margaret Fuller, Lydia Maria Child, Orestes Brownson, Charles Dickens,
Harriet Martineau, and many others; see Coale (1998); Kaplan (1975); Mills (2006); Tatar (1978).

these cures before the biblical fall, the Count declared. They called it “the medicine of God”
(King, 1842, pp. 29–30). India figured in this eighteenth-century rendering of mesmerism’s
early history as well. Philostratus’s The Life of Appollonius of Tyana describes the ancient
traveler’s journey to India, where he witnessed “Brachmanes” (i.e., Brahmins) performing
cures that appeared to the mesmerists who perused the text as something akin to their system
(Cambry, 1784, pp. 9–11).
In 1792, John Bell (1792, pp. iii–iv), a British student in Mesmer’s Parisian teaching so-
ciety, offered a partial list of historic figures who either “knew this science” or used a similar
technique of “touching” to heal, such as Paracelsus, the Neoplatonic physician–philosopher
Robert Fludd, Francis Bacon, the British folk healer Valentin Greatrakes, among others.
In later histories, the Greek temple of Eusculpius is mentioned as a site where magnetic
somnambulism was practiced in its ancient form. Legend had it that temple priests put sick
pilgrims to “sleep” and the healing occurred in their dreams (D., 1845; Leger, 1846, p 223).
By the 1840s, the basic premise of this story had been expanded upon in numerous pub-
lications until it became an unquestioned feature of mesmeric history. There are a dozen vari-
ations that go something like this: Mesmer’s discovery is the most recent incarnation of a long
line of ancient healing practices. The legendary powers of Egyptian priests, Assyrians,
Greeks, and even further back to tribal conjurers are representative of mesmeric figures from
an earlier age. (Collyer, 1842, pp. 3–6; Durant, 1837, pp. 14–23; Fishbough, 1851a,
p. 9; Leger, 1846, pp. 211–263; Sunderland, 1842, pp. 7–8). Even Christian healing miracles
were attributed to the workings of animal magnetism (Chandler, 1851; Leger, 1846,
pp. 219–223).11
A most essential point is made here: Note the universalizing of the practice in the mes-
merists’ historical purview. Rather than frame mesmerism as exclusive or exceptional,
Mesmer’s discovery is seen as ubiquitous and inclusive of other traditions.12 This position es-
tablished the hermeneutic conceptual footing by which the mesmerists could look for simi-
larities of practice and experience in Asian cultures. Note also the reverse. If the mesmerists
had framed their practice as exceptional, Euro-American attitudes of racial and cultural su-
periority might well have seeped in, resulting in a more culturally insular, exclusivist view.
Despite the appeal of the mesmerists’ “universalistic” claim, critics of a more skeptical
secular–rational persuasion used the same historic parallels the mesmerists found so enticing
to debunk mesmerism as just one more “imposture” in a long history of awful superstitions
(Hall, 1845; Mackay, 1852; Reese, 1837). Conservative clergy were also repulsed.
Reconfiguring Christian accounts of religious cures and miracles as a mere expression of
magnetic power was a detestable “naturalization” of pious supernatural events (Jones, 1846;
Powers, 1828; Smolnikar, 1851; Winter, 1998, pp. 268–275).
The mesmerists responded to their critics by further “modernizing” their system. They
linked it to progressive reform movements (Poyen, 1837; Schmit, 2005) and strengthened the
physiological basis of mesmerism by reconfiguring animal magnetism as an electromagnetic
nerve power circulating through the nervous system (Collyer, 1843, p. 31; Dods, 1850; King,
1837, p. 20; Sunderland, 1842, pp. 7–8). The study of “the reciprocal influence of the body
11. In varying degrees, depending on how well read they were, nineteenth-century historians of mesmerism were
aware that their movement was a receiver of elements of the European hermetic tradition. See Colquhoun (1836) and
Ennemoser (1894). Catherine Albanese (2007) argues that mesmerism is a key “prism” through which this older her-
metic tradition filtered into the emerging American nineteenth-century metaphysical movement.
12. Frank J. MacHovec, writing in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis (1975) adopts a similar inclusive view
regarding the history of hypnotism.

8 DAVID T. SCHMIT
and mind,” as the American mesmerist La Roy Sunderland put it, became a key area of in-
quiry (1843, p. 39). This appeal to psychological and physiological knowledge, combined
with the popularity of Romantic Naturphilosophie among mid-century liberal religious folk
helped the mesmerists’ cause. Fusing unusual mesmeric mind-powers (with the occasional
hint of transcendental realities) to electromagnetic nerve currents allowed the mesmerists to
advance a high-stakes vision of a humanized natural philosophy rooted in the body. Subse-
quently, as the movement prospered in the 1840s, investigative space opened up for more
purely “mentalistic” interpretations of mesmeric phenomena. Within this psychological
framework, practitioners believed they were conducting superlative probes of internal states
beyond the senses. How the mesmerists linked these investigations to Oriental mind powers
is the next topic to be considered.
Mesmerism and Oriental Medicine
It was in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that the intelligentsia of Europe
and America became much more aware of Asian high civilization. Unburdened from a rigidly
exclusivist Christian worldview by an Enlightenment sensibility, select groups of Westerners
grew intrigued with the art, literature, and religion of first China, then India and Japan
(Barnes, 2005, Chapter 4; Schwab, 1984; Tweed & Prothero, 1999). Along with explorers,
seamen, and traders, and occasional visits by Asian dignitaries to the courts of Europe, mis-
sionary reports were a major source of knowledge about Asia. From the mid-sixteenth to
the middle of the eighteenth century, Jesuit missionaries’ translations of Asian texts
and first-hand accounts of their travels became popular fare in Europe, offering readers
enticing glimpses of the “exotic Orient” (Batchelor, 1994; Rubies, 2000, Zupanov, 2005).13
Occasionally, Indian ascetics and Chinese healers were treated sympathetically in these
reports. For the most part, however, missionary works reinforced imperialistic attitudes by
denigrating Asian contemplatives and healers as sorcerers or idolaters (Barnes, 2005:
pp. 197–201; Jackson, 1981, pp. 85–102; Rubies, 2000; Lach & Foss, 1990, pp. 14–34).
The above-mentioned Count of Mellet made one of the earliest efforts linking mesmerism
to the Orient. Hearing of Chinese medical practices reminiscent of mesmerism, the Count sent
a collection of mesmeric texts to an acquaintance, the Jesuit missionary Fr. Jean-Joseph-Marie
Amiot (1718–1793), who was stationed in “Pekin” (King, 1842, p. 30). Up until that time, the
few European physicians aware of Chinese medicine assumed it was merely a variant of
Galen’s classic humoral theory (Barnes 2005, p. 99). For Amiot, the mesmeric works were a
revelation, for he saw astonishing parallels between Mesmer’s curative and Chinese medicine,
so much so that he called the latter “magnetism among the Chinese.” In letters back to contacts
in France, he claimed, “For animal Magnetism and its two Poles . . . I substitute very simply
Tai-ki, yin and yang” (Huard, 1978, pp. 64–65 as cited in Barnes, 2005, p. 204).
Amiot was no stranger to Chinese medicine. Stationed in China for over thirty years, he
attributed his own good health to the care of Oriental physicians. Moreover, he observed that
instances of Chinese healing similar to mesmerism were commonplace, even among barbers,
who practiced what appeared to be a variation of mesmeric passes to treat common ills
(Barnes, 2005, pp. 205–206). Why have these “tantalizing” historic connections never been
explored? Linda Barnes proposes that accusations by European elites that mesmerism was
quackery likely terminated further inquiries. What are now thought of as Eurocentric notions
13. The Jesuit practice of accommodatio, whose purpose was to help integrate the Christian gospel into indigenous be-
lief systems, spurred select members of the society to study with Chinese Taoists and Hindu ascetics (Zupanov, 1999,
p. 5). These unusual reports provided the West with some of the first descriptions of Asian contemplative practices.

of superiority prevailed in 1803, when Delatour used the same Jesuit letters to deride both
mesmerism and Chinese medicine as far inferior to conventional Western medicine (Barnes,
2005, pp. 208–209). Most of Amiot’s letters on this intriguing matter remain unpublished.
The eclectic physician John King, who translated for American audiences Puységur’s
mesmerism manual, Instructions on Animal Magnetism (1837), also translated the Count’s
commentary and one of Amiot’s letters for the New York City mesmerism journal,
The Magnet, where it was published in July 1842 (King, 1842, pp. 29–31). The Magnet
(1842–1844), which offered up a mix of mesmerism, psychology, physiology, and phrenol-
ogy, was edited by La Roy Sunderland (1804–1885), one of the nation’s premiere mesmerists.
Sunderland had been exploring electromagnetism as it pertained to mesmeric healing, so he
likely appreciated the similarities between the positive and negative charge of the electro-
magnetic current and Chinese “yin–yang.” What Amiot and Sunderland both recognized is
that Chinese medicine and mesmerism are essentially vitalistic healing practices (although
they didn’t use this term).
Select Western physicians remained interested in Oriental medicine throughout the nine-
teenth century, but as Barnes (2005, pp. 194–197, 329–330) points out, later inquiries were
not contingent upon mesmeric formulations. Instead, widely held vitalistic views of illness
and ongoing interest in electric medicine spurned the investigations. Since this work was not
directly informed by mesmerism, the subject will not be dealt with here.
Trance Investigations
By the early 1840s, Puységur’s framing of the mesmeric trance as contingent upon a
“magnetic operator” controlling and transmitting a vitalistic substance to a passive somnam-
bule was shifting along two fronts. On one side, liberal-minded clergy and freelance intellec-
tuals were exploring the linkages between the trance and religious states. On a second front,
physicians keenly interested in the trance’s medical properties were bringing their clinical
acumen to bear on the curative validity of magnetic nerve forces. Both provided a backdrop
for the mesmerists’ Oriental inquiries. Before proceeding, a brief digression is in order to sit-
uate these events within the West’s continuing engagements with Asian culture.
During the middle decades of the nineteenth century, museum displays, consumer ob-
jects, lecture programs, and entertainment increasingly featured Oriental culture.14 Asians
penetrated into more sectors of European and North American society as well, beyond the
sailors, house servants, and occasional immigrant Christian converts who characterized most
of the earlier contacts (Cumpston, 1953; Fisher, 1997; Maffly-Kipp, 1997; Mazumdar, 2003;
Visram, 1986). The most influential change, however, was in the intellectual elites’ attitudes
toward Asian philosophy and religion. Works such as the widely disseminated Asiatic
Researches (1788–1839), published by British colonialists in Calcutta, fostered an explosion
of interest in the region.15 Raymond Schwab (1984, p. 8) describes the unparalleled European
14. By the second decade of the nineteenth-century, Chinese circus performers appeared in New York City and
London, and a growing number of museums displayed Asian artifacts (Barnes, 2005, pp. 232–235; Tweed &
Prothero, 1999). Travelers’ tales of the Orient were disseminated ever more broadly through the era’s popular lecture
circuits (Bode, 1954; Hansen-Taylor & Scudder, 1885; Wright, 1851).
15. In eighteenth-century America the effect was similar: intellectuals were moved by the Asiatic Researches, in-
cluding Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Joseph Priestley (Cappan, 1988, pp. 409–413, 427–428; Priestley, 1972;
Tweed & Prothero, 1999, pp. 44–51). Sir William Jones (1746–1794), a Calcutta jurist and linguist, formed the
Asiatick Society to advance knowledge of the region. He was one of the first Western moderns to note the intrigu-
ing similarities between Greek Platonism and Vedic philosophy (Jones, 1993, pp. 232–235, 246, 251). In a recent re-
vision of Jones’s heroic story, Mohamad Tavakoli-Targi (2003, pp. 106–114) shows how indebted he was to Indian
scholars such as Mir Muhamad Husayn Isfahani for his major “discoveries.”

10 DAVID T. SCHMIT
reaction to these volumes as “the great shock with which a whole buried world arose to un-
settle the foremost minds of an age.” Formal Orientalist scholarship was born in Europe at
this time, due in no small part to the impact of the Researches.16 The Romantics, also moved
by the Researches, found in India a fecund culture on which to project their “yearnings” for
the distant origins of civilization and to indulge their fascination with exotic mysticism
(Halbfass, 1988; Schwab, 1984).17 Interestingly, the Romantics’ fascination for Asian mysti-
cism readily scaffolds to their wider curiosity for unusual states of mind, dreams, sleepwalk-
ing, reveries, and hallucinations. Henri Ellenberger (1970) marks these latter inquiries as key
precursors to the emergence of theories of the unconscious mind.
As these events were transpiring on the continent, the New England Transcendentalists
initiated their own study of Asian philosophy.18 Transcendentalist and Romantic inquiries—
of key interest here because they were generational peers to the mesmerists—center almost
entirely on Indian philosophy and literary works or, in the latter’s case, employ the East as a
setting for exotic storytelling. The focus on philosophical texts allowed these writers to side-
step Victorian views regarding Oriental racial inferiority and questions of the region’s appar-
ent cultural backwardness. A high-minded inclusive literary vision was advanced instead,
with classic Indian texts accorded the same respect as Western philosophy. These forays mark
a new phase in modern Western thinking about the East, and are atypical for much early- to
mid-century Victorian discourse. Consequently, the Transcendentalists and Romantics are
credited with disseminating a favorable view of Asian thought to Western audiences (Christy,
1963; Jackson, 1981; Taylor, 1999a; Tweed, 1992).
While the Transcendentalists were studying India’s sacred texts, a group of liberal
American clergy were pressing forward in their investigations of the trance. The backdrop for
their inquiries was America’s Second Great Awakening revivals, with their rousing “religious
excitements.” Revival worshippers often succumbed to visionary swoons, ecstatic fits,
and—most relevant to the mesmerists—somnambule-like trances (Taves, 1999). Given the
commonalities, a renewed appreciation of the purported transcendental dimensions of the
mesmeric trance emerged, with a near-reverent view advocated by some, as if it accessed a
divine mystery. In this regard, Universalist minister John Bovee Dods (1850) claimed that
the trance revealed the inherent “sacred” psychology of the soul. Others, however, took the
similarities to indicate a mutual psychological foundation. Former Methodist revival preacher
La Roy Sunderland (1853, pp. 42–49) provided empirical support for this approach when he
discovered that magnetic somnambules deep in trance occasionally entered what appeared to
be an ecstatic religious state, suggesting a fluid, interchangeable quality between the two.
This nascent attempt at a psychology of religious experience provided the mesmerists
with a novel interpretive framework, which they directed toward stories from Asia describing
trances, ineffable cures, and “states of abstraction” among ascetics. If mesmerism’s existence
among Asian peoples could be documented, it would provide evidence that the trance was a
16. By the time the last volume of the Researches was published in 1839, Oriental scholarship in Europe was well
underway, with chairs of Oriental studies in major universities. In the U.S., the American Oriental Society began the
scholarly study of Asian philology in 1842 (Jackson, 1981, Chapter 10).
17. So popular were the Researches among the Romantics, that Schwab (1984, p. 40) asserts that they are seminal
texts of Europe’s Romantic movement (see also Trautman, 1998, p. 96).
18. Mention of India’s sacred texts appears often in the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry
David Thoreau (1817–1862). Both read the Asiatic Researches. Thoreau alludes to practicing yoga in Walden, but it
is so obliquely described that it is inconclusive whether he was actually engaging in the practice (Jackson, 1981,
p. 65). Like Jones (see note 15), Emerson saw the similarities between Platonism—in particular, the Neoplatonism
of the third-century philosopher Plotinus—and Indian philosophy (Allen, 1981, pp. ix, 66; Carpenter, 1930,
pp. 75–78).

naturally occurring universal state. This, in turn, could provide ammunition against critics
who argued that it was a contrived “artificial” state based on heightened imaginations. One
of the best examples of this universalist advocacy appeared in 1855–1856, in a series of
articles by Edinburgh scholar J. W. Jackson, entitled, “Extatics [sic] of Genius.” Jackson at-
tempted to probe the psychological underpinnings of an impressive cross-cultural list of reli-
gious visionaries.19 His particular approach involved a synthesis of Romantic “great man of
genius” theory, phrenology, and mesmerism. He concluded that qualities of “seerdom” all
share a fundamental “phenomenon of consciousness” that is “filtered and coloured” by local
beliefs and peculiarities (Jackson, 1856, p. 375). These overlooked essays deserve a more
thorough historical analysis.
The second arena of inquiry into the trance was instigated by medical men. Their inter-
est in its curative properties gradually cleaved it from mesmeric currents (Braid, 1843; Drake,
1844; Sunderland, 1843). Manchester surgeon James Braid discovered that occasionally,
those highly susceptible to the trance could self-induce the state. The effect of this new per-
mutation was to generate more psychological explanations for trance phenomena. A British
émigré to America, Robert H. Collyer (1814–1891), was one of the first to combine this more
differentiated understanding of the trance with a consideration of Indian religious states.
Mind, Body, and Vital Signs
Collyer wrote at least four books, but he was primarily a widely traveled itinerant lec-
turer and sometime physician. His Mesmeric Magazine (1842) contains a noteworthy chapter
entitled “History of Mesmerism.” To the typical list of figures recounted in mesmeric histo-
ries, Collyer adds “Oriental Asiatics” as practitioners of a form of mesmerism. In the follow-
ing passage, he comments about India’s “fanatic devotees” and their technique to attain “an
ecstatic communion with the Diety.” Note his attention to elements of the practice: “by fixing
themselves in a particular position, and steadfastly gazing at the end of the nose. They assert
that if they persevere for a considerable time in this singular practice, they will suddenly
perceive a beatific light. . . .” Ostensibly, this is a description of a yogic meditation technique
described by Patanjali in his classic Raja Yoga Sutras, although Collyer does not identify the
practice as such. What he offers is a mesmeric equivalent: “Mesmerisees when clairvoyant,
almost invariably mention a bright light, which they perceive before their foreheads, just
above the eyebrows” (p. 4).
Collyer then turns to Braid’s method of “automatically” inducing the trance: “This man
[Braid] found that by making a person in a sitting posture gaze steadfastly upon an object sit-
uated at an angle of forty-five degrees above the common axis of vision,” that person is
thrown “into a mesmeric condition,” the result being “total insensibility to external impres-
sion.” “Convincing proof,” Collyer continues, “of the possibility of somnambulism being vol-
untarily induced, even in the manner of the Hindoo fakirs” (p. 4).20 By focusing on the
practitioner’s bodily position, on the gaze, on the power to self-induce trance, and on subjec-
tive experiences in the state, Collyer is highlighting features of the practice that a mesmerist—
and likely only a mesmerist—would be interested in. More importantly, Collyer sees the two
19. Jackson’s profiles include Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Quakerism founder George Fox, Swedenborg, Mormonism
founder Joseph Smith, Shamyl a “Soofee” (sic; Islamic mystic), and “Hung-Lew-Tseuen, the theological leader of
the Chinese Revolution”; see Jackson, 1855a, 1855b, 1856.
20. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Western travelers to India often employed the term fakir to refer to the
great variety of Muslim, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetics and contemplatives they encountered. The term
was likely first picked up in the Middle East when Europeans encountered Sufi ascetics, who are known in Arabic
as faqir, or persons who practice material and spiritual poverty.

12 DAVID T. SCHMIT
practices converging, despite their different origins. The two states are different, of course, but
Collyer is captivated by the commonalities, enough so that thereafter he made demonstrations
of what he called “Hindu Magic” a featured topic in his mesmeric public lectures, likely the
first mesmerist to do so.21
George Sandby (1799–1881), vicar of Flixton in Suffolk and advocate of the practice,
advanced the idea of mesmerism’s worldwide ubiquity in his Mesmerism and Its Opponents
(1848). He marshals an extensive array of observations of unusual states and trance-like be-
havior among peoples ranging from North American Indians to Catholic saints. The English
Baptist missionary to Serampore, India, William Ward’s work on Hinduism was influential in
Sandby’s efforts to link mesmerism to Asia. His A View of the History, Literature, and
Mythology of the Hindoos (1824)—which captivated the transcendentalists as well—included
a translation of Patanjali’s Raja Yoga Sutras, the sixth-century classic on Indian Yoga and med-
itation.22 Sandby comments freely on Ward’s description of the “religious austerities” of a
“half-starved fanatic,” which describes the practices of a member of one of the “philosophical
sects,” the “Patanjulu”:
Its leading feature was “the restraining of the mind, and the confining it to internal med-
itations.” This was called Yogu. The effect was analogous to self-induced
Mesmerism. . . . The Yogee, in preparing his mind for intense meditation, “first, gradu-
ally suppresses the breath.” . . . The ascetic then endeavors to fix his thoughts upon some
act of the senses; for instance, “he places his sight and thoughts on the tip of his nose.”
He must practice these exercises daily, — as often and for as long a time as he can. . . .
“By withholding the mind from wandering, the organs are turned from their accustomed
objects inwards. The Yogee, who has perfected himself in all this,” . . . has induced the
ecstatic or Mesmeric condition. . . . (Sandby, 1848, p. 361; italics in original)
Sandby claims that the advantageous “mind powers” available to the “yogee” issue forth
from advanced mesmeric states, such as the ability to “see inside the body” to withstand “heat
or cold” and endure pain. Here we see the mesmeric trance directly linked to yogic medita-
tion at a time when Westerners were in the process of differentiating such practices from the
great variety of Hindu religious observances. Note also the reference to phrenological “organs
of the mind” and the assumption that the yogis’ “ecstatic” states are identical to the “mesmeric
condition.”
A key concern for mesmerists interested in studying unusual religio–mind–body states
was what Sandby called “the physiological problem,” or how to account for the “state of the
nerves or the movement of the electrical fluid in the system” during these experiences
(pp. 361–362). Collyer’s and Sandby’s attention to body, mind, and senses—essential to es-
tablishing the trance as naturalistic—raises a question: Did the mesmerists have the ability to
conduct a cross-cultural empirical investigation of these physiological phenomena? The an-
swer is yes and no, for a methodology was available, but such an investigation was problem-
atic because the properties of the mesmeric trance were far from agreed upon. Nevertheless,
by the early 1840s, the methodology for an empirical analysis comparing mesmeric trance and
related Indian religious states existed.
21. Collyer lecture handbill, Literary and Scientific Institution, London, April 23, 30, and May 7, 1843, Theodosius
Purland Collection, Vol. 2, National Library of Medicine, Washington, DC.
22. Ward, a journalist before entering the clergy, brought a reporter’s objective sensibility to his writings, which
likely contributed to the great popularity of his A View of the History, Literature and Mythology of the Hindoos
(1824) (Stein, 1967).

Select mesmerists and physicians investigating trance physiology documented their work
in reports wherein vital signs were recorded during mesmeric sessions (Collyer, 1842, p. 10;
Drake, 1842, pp. 71–79; Webster, 1976, pp. 277–281). The best investigation of the era, which
systematically procured physiological data, was conducted by John Kearsley Mitchell
(1798–1858), a physician and professor of medicine at Philadelphia’s Jefferson Medical
College. Orthodox medical man that he was, Mitchell (1859, p. 151) was suspicious of the
wild claims made by the “hundreds of magnetizers” taking up the practice. In 1836, he em-
barked on an ambitious five-year investigation of the controversial curative, wherein he
vowed to examine mesmerism “step by step, without prejudice or partiality.”
Mitchell’s experiments are methodologically advanced for any of the human sciences of
his time, because he attempted to align a “mental state” with physiological measures. To ac-
complish this, he used what he called multiple “cases” (similar to a sample), and systemati-
cally recorded baseline physiological measures such as pulse, temperature, pallor of the skin,
and susceptibility to pain before inducing each subject into trance, with follow-up measures
of the same. Results were tallied and means, ranges, and proportions calculated. Of his sev-
eral findings, Mitchell (1859, pp. 200, 259) concluded that physiological changes do indeed
occur in the mesmeric sleep and that people are in an “unconscious” state.
In a parallel development (April 1839), Samuel Adams, MD, an Illinois professor of nat-
ural sciences, was intrigued by similarities between the mesmeric trance and unusual states.
He called for studies of mesmerism to examine “the influence of some of the mental states
upon the functions of the body,” including how the nerves “transmit impressions to the brain,”
and the “function of sensations” when a person is in the grips of “witchcraft” or “mesmerism.”
Adams (1839, pp. 363–365) called this line of inquiry Psycho-Physiology, the first person on
record to use this term (Tassinary et al., 1989). With Mitchell and Adams, then, the method-
ology and the conceptual foundations existed to conduct “psycho-physiological” research on
meditating Indian “yogees.” Our historical vantage point allows us to highlight these features
of Mitchell’s and Adams’s work here; for the mesmerists, however, these were intriguing items
in an array of phenomena which drew their attention.
Esdaile’s Mesmerism Practice in India
There was one mesmerist who had the opportunity to examine Hindu fakirs directly: the
Scottish physician James Esdaile (1808–1859). A medical officer in the East India Company,
Esdaile (1846) worked as a physician in Bengal in the 1840s and scored many successes using
mesmerism as anesthesia for surgeries and as a curative. After training local medical workers
in mesmeric induction procedures, Esdaile mounted a campaign to spread the practice beyond
his Calcutta hospital. For a time, his unusual medical treatments were newsworthy items, both
in Indian colonial newspapers and in Britain (Ernst, 2004; Prakash, 1992; Winter, 1998).
Esdaile’s success, combined with the warm reception offered by the Bengalis, would in-
dicate opportunities for authentic interchanges between the two parties. Indeed, Esdaile
(1846, p. 21) observed that local “conjurers” were treating the ill with something akin to mes-
merism and described instances of indigenous trance that were similar to magnetic somnam-
bulism. At one point, he even presents himself to a Bengali healer as a “brother magician.”
Obstacles to authentic interchanges were sizable, however. Waltraud Ernst (2004) documents
how unstably mesmeric medicine was positioned in 1840s British India, with colonial poli-
cies, Western medical elitism, and Anglican missionary sentiments circumscribing these en-
counters. Already under suspicion as an imposture by medical elites back in Britain,
mesmerism’s stance as a legitimate science was fragile at best, offering further challenges to
Esdaile’s efforts. The fact that educated Bengalis supported it and the lower classes took

14 DAVID T. SCHMIT
to calling Esdaile’s Calcutta hospital “the house of magic, or jadoo hospital” further under-
mined the cause for mesmerism, which appeared to be sidling up too closely to “inferior”
indigenous medicines.23
Given mesmerism’s delicate situation, it is not surprising that Esdaile’s efforts to
establish linkages between the trance and local religio-medical practices were tentative. “My
psychological experiments have been very limited,” he confesses. Instead, he puts on colonial
racial airs and views his Bengali subjects as “a feeble, ill-nourished race, remarkably deficient
in nervous energy.” Their susceptibility to mesmerism could be explained by their lack of in-
telligence and vitality (Esdaile, 1846, pp. 14, 110).
The mid-century advent of chemical anesthetic agents rapidly devalued mesmerism’s
medical utility in India and in the West, putting an end to Esdaile’s mesmerism practice.
Subsequently, from the point of view of Western examination of Indian religio-mental states,
Esdaile represents a missed opportunity. In the end, Gyan Prakash (1999, p. 164) suggests his
Indian mesmeric campaign should be understood as a fleeting act of a Western medical mis-
sionary. A tough colonial policy instituted by the British during this period further reinforced
haughty imperial attitudes and poisoned meaningful interactions with Indians (Winter, 1998,
p. 189). The little evidence available from nineteenth-century colonials who actually took note
of indigenous practices supports this proposition. A Lt.-Col. Davidson (1851, p. 4), who spent
28 years in India, declared, “many interesting things are most carefully concealed from
the English because we invariably scoff at or ridicule native practices, speaking of them in the
lump, with a most unphilosophical contempt” (see also Neilan, 1855, p. 44).
The Zoist
Despite the imperialistic obstacles, a few reports slipped into mesmerists’ hands, due in
no small part to the work of Britain’s premiere mesmerist, the medical man John Elliotson
(1791–1868). Acting as senior physician at University College Hospital in London, and later
as editor of the mesmerism journal, The Zoist (1844-55), Elliotson encountered a number of
former colonials who told of trance-like practices in India. In other instances, he and his as-
sociates perused memoirs authored by travelers, missionaries, and military men stationed in
India for other evidences of mesmerism. This Zoist material can be classified into three types:
descriptions of Indians employing practices that appeared to be “magnetic passes” to heal the
ill, inducing trance as a curative, and demonstrating unusual powers of mind and “mental ab-
straction.” The excerpts that follow will focus on the latter two.
One Zoist report recounts the observations of a colonial soldier, Col. M. E. Bagnold
(1848, pp. 250–251). In 1808, near Bombay (present day Mumbai), Bagnold witnessed a
monk performing an apparent trance treatment on an ill woman by having her gaze upon his
sandalwood beads. When she “appeared to sleep,” the monk “made her speak during that
sleep, describe her diseases, and what would cure it.”
Bagnold describes another curious incident observed in Maharashtra province. The
scene unfolds in the following way:
[A] Gooroo or priest in an oracle type ceremony, caused a man, through chants and other
actions to sway himself about, sob, hiccup, and even roll on the ground in strange con-
vulsions, the eyes assuming a ghastly appearance, and the body frequently rigid.
Questions are now put to him about his own or some other person’s health, good or bad
fortune, absent persons, . . . [which are] taken as oracular. (Bagnold, 1848, p. 253)
23. “Letter by Dr. Mouat” in Record of Cases (1848), as cited in Ernst (2004, p. 65).

For Bagnold, the actions of this entranced Indian were eerily reminiscent of the odd be-
haviors mesmerists elicited from subjects in their lecture–expositions, including the ability to
endure pain.
The following passage, recounted by another British military man, Richard F. Burton
(1852, pp. 180–181), also stationed near Bombay, provides what ostensibly appears to be a
yogi demonstrating considerable mind powers during a curative. “The magnetizer . . . is well
constituted: his eye is piercing, his presence dignified, his nervous energy superabundant, and
his natural powers of concentrativeness, increased by artificial exercises, assist him in ob-
taining complete mastery over himself and others.” Note Burton’s approving, phrenology-
laced description (i.e., the concentrativeness) of the ascetic. A footnote to this excerpt states:
“This mastery over himself is well proved by his powers of hibernation and voluntary trance.”
The use of hibernation here likely denotes meditation. Burton then describes the ascetic’s
treatment method, which involved “fixing his attention” upon his subject, employing “silent
volition,” and “throwing him into a sleep-waking state.”
In another Zoist report, the Elliotson associate William Neilan (1855, p. 37) procured
from an anonymous traveler a description of “The Brahmins of Madura.” The incident took
place in a temple where several priests had gathered. In the following passage, note the use of
“mentalistic” terms to describe internal states: “They commenced their invocations with the sa-
cred word, Ohme and concentrate the whole energy of their minds upon what they are intent
upon accomplishing. They sometimes all three go into a state of trance . . . .” The priests re-
ported that “this peculiar state” is due to “internal and external perceptive faculties. . . . When
they concentrate their minds intently upon any particular abstract idea, the latter becomes
closed, and the interior sense opens. . . . [T]here is nothing more certain,” this author claims,
“than that mesmerism with all its modern improvements and discoveries has been known and
practiced by this very race of Brahmins from the most remote ages” (p. 36). In a surprising ac-
knowledgment of just how widespread such a view was in his home country, the author claims
that Indian mind powers are “a very well known fact now in England” (pp. 39–40).
After witnessing numerous instances of what appear to be yogis in meditative states and
ascetics practicing trance-induced cures of illness, this traveler offers a noteworthy summa-
tion because it turns the tables on Victorian notions of cultural superiority: “[N]ot only
the practice of mesmerism, as we call it, [is] well known among the Hindoos, . . . but that the
higher orders of them are possessed of a degree of knowledge of this mysterious power, . . .
far beyond what the most enlightened mesmerists in England can at present do” (p. 43).
In sum, these excerpts from The Zoist underscore the psychological character of the
mesmerist inquiries of Asian meditative religio–mind–body practices. For all intents and
purposes, they are drawn to instances of mind–body curatives and to yogis’ breath, vital
presence, powers of attention, “hibernation,” and “states of mental abstraction.”
Psychological Mysteries of the Hindoos

The last mesmerist under study is a New Yorker, former Universalist minister William
Fishbough (1814–1881). Fishbough is a key figure in the establishment of the philosophy of
Spiritualism in the United States, having edited Andrew Jackson Davis’s seminal book,
Nature Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice for Mankind (Davis, 1847). In the early 1850s, he
wrote a column entitled “Psychology” for the famous phrenology publishing firm Fowlers
and Wells’s nationally distributed periodical The American Phrenological Journal.
Fishbough promised to present an “enlarged sense” of psychology in his column by
addressing “extraordinary and unusual states” (1851b, p. 9). Like thousands of others in
mid-nineteenth-century America, including the transcendentalists and numerous artists and

16 DAVID T. SCHMIT
innovators (Block, 1932; Emerson, n.d.; Larsen et al., 1979), Fishbough was quite taken with
Swedenborgianism, which forms a crucial conceptual backdrop to his inquiries. With many of
the nation’s readers already in the grips of Naturphilosophie, Swedenborg’s cosmic fusion
of nature and spirit seemed a natural revelatory extension. The Swedish mystic provoked
pages of commentary in the mesmerist literature (Schmit, 2005, p. 420). In late
Neoplatonism, which is the more ancient metaphysical system of which Swedenborg is a part
(Ellwood, 1983, pp. 120–122), mind is situated in a superior causal mental realm above the
sensory-bound physical world (similar to Hindu philosophy). For many mesmerists, such as
Fishbough—as was true for Hindu yogis, who called them siddhis—mind powers emanated
from this realm beyond the senses.
Fishbough’s concordance with Swedenborgianism allowed him to find philosophical
common ground with “Hindoo priests.” His descriptions of “interior states” of “quietude and
abstraction . . . whilst no disturbing impressions from the outer world are flowing in through
the bodily senses” are reminiscent of Indian contemplative literature (Fishbough, 1854, p. 57).
One passage parallels in a most intriguing way Green’s and Rama Rao’s twentieth-century
study of Yogiraja, the Indian “burying yogi,” Fishbough (1853a) recounts a fabulous story of
an ascetic demonstrating mind powers by going for weeks without food or oxygen after being
buried alive.
In another article, entitled “Psychological Mysteries of the Hindoos” (1853b), Fishbough
relays the contents of a letter from a friend describing an Indian priest by the name of
Lehanteka preaching through California. The letter’s author partook of Lehanteka’s lectures
on “celestial philosophy” and witnessed several purported cures and incidences of clairvoy-
ance. In the following passage, Fishbough salutes the commonalities between mesmerism and
the Hindu holy man’s views while underscoring the naturalistic linkage between the two: “it
is not probable that essentially the same theories would have been hit upon in different ages,
and by people so widely disconnected, and that they would be perpetuated, withal, through so
long periods, if they had not some substantial foundation in nature” (p. 33).
Lehanteka’s California lectures are noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, it places a
Hindu missionary on American soil four decades earlier than the current record states.24
Second, as an act of East–West intellectual exchange, this meeting between Euro-American
lecture-goers and a representative of Hinduism is groundbreaking. (These are just as likely
spiritualists as mesmerists. The commingling of the two movements in the early 1850s was so
extensive that disentangling is impossible.) Other evidence corroborates the fact that the
Spiritualists were vanguard American explorers of Asian religion, although the current
record states that such inquiries occurred later in the century (Peebles, 1875; Tweed, 1992,
pp. 50–51).
One more piece of overlooked evidence in the history of West-meets-East links the mes-
merists’ Oriental inquiries to twentieth-century psychotherapy. Warren Felt Evans
(1817–1889), acknowledged cofounder with Phineas Quimby (1802–1866) of the mesmerism-
inspired mental healing movement, briefly addresses the mind powers of the “fakirs of India”
in his book The Mental Cure (1869). He notes how they are able to control “the contractions
of the muscular tissue of the heart,” suspend respiration, and alter normal functioning of
24. The author attempted to provide external corroboration for Lehanteka’s visit to California by reviewing San
Francisco city newspapers The Daily Alta and The Golden Eagle for the months preceding this article’s August 1853
date. No corroboration was found, making the only evidence for this encounter the Fishbough article. By this date,
there were dozens of trading ships arriving every year from Calcutta into the port of San Francisco, so the possibil-
ity that a Hindu monk or priest visited is not unlikely.

“the involuntary vital organs” (Evans, 1869, p. 115). These observations are astonishingly
similar to Elmer Green’s psychophysiological research on yogis a century later. The founders
of the mental healing and hypnosis-inspired Emanuel Movement (1906–1910), the first self-
proclaimed psychotherapy system in the United States (Caplan, 1998), carried this same ap-
preciation of Asian religio–mind–body practices forward into the twentieth century. In their
attempt to identify different religious and therapeutic systems wherein “the reserves of men-
tal and moral energy within us may be made available for physical and spiritual health,” they
include in their list “the Raja Yoga of Indian Theosophy” (Worcester, McComb, & Coriat,
1908, pp. 103–104).
In terms of the further advance of Western engagements with Asia, the last two decades
of the nineteenth century feature an exponential increase in intellectual and cultural connec-
tions (Fields, 1992; Maffly-Kipp, 1997, pp. 127–148; Mazumdar, 2003, p. 224). Select New
England and European intellectuals, theosophists, and artists traveled to the Orient to study
(Conway, 1906; Fields, 1992; Jackson, 1981, pp. 103–118, 157–173; Peebles, 1875). A few
Americans began practicing versions of Raja Yoga (Albanese, 2007, pp. 358–363), and
Buddhism became somewhat “fashionable” among the literati of Boston (Tweed, 1992, p. 41).
American appropriations and recombinations of Asian thought with existing Euro-American
metaphysical impulses became so pervasive that religious historian Catherine Albanese calls
the hybrid that emerged “metaphysical Asia” (2007, p. 331). Indian theosophists actively
contributed to this sensibility (Albanese, 2007, p. 331; Prakash, 1999). The culmination of
these trends was achieved in 1893 in Chicago, when the World’s Parliament of Religions
hosted Asian religious dignitaries (Barrows, 1893; Seager, 1994). Among them, the highly re-
garded Calcutta monk and meditation teacher Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902), who became
somewhat of a celebrity in America (Burke, 1973, 1987; Jackson, 1994).25 Despite the chilling
effect of early-twentieth-century immigration acts, since the Parliament’s time, there has been
a presence of meditating Hindu swamis and Buddhist monks in the West up to the present.
Interestingly, Vivekananda visited Harvard, where he met William James and was re-
portedly offered a teaching position, which he turned down (Vivekananda, 1966).26 By this
time James and other turn-of-the-century investigators were busy incorporating elements of
hypnosis, spiritualism, and psychic research (Taylor, 1983)—into an increasingly differenti-
ated understanding of the psychology of consciousness. How this mesmerism-influenced
body of knowledge, combined with developments in psychophysiology, shaped twentieth-
century scientific research of Asian meditative practice is a topic for further study.
CONCLUSION
The nineteenth-century mesmerists, who spread their practice and views of mind and
body throughout Western Europe and America by way of well-attended lectures, widely dis-
tributed printed matter, and medical treatments in hospitals and makeshift clinics, also
disseminated this inquiry of Oriental mind powers. This concluding section will appraise its
significance with three questions in mind: (1) How do the mesmerists’ Oriental investigations
compare to other mid-nineteenth-century Westerners who were investigating Asian culture
25. After the Parliament, Vivekananda conducted two successful lecture tours through the U.S. (1893–1897 and
1899–1900). One book he authored for his Western audiences addressed meditation and was based on Patanjali’s
Raja Yoga Sutras (Vivekananda, 1920).
26. James mentions Vivekananda favorably in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1958, p. 387, n.28).

18 DAVID T. SCHMIT
and how to make sense of these inquiries vis à vis Victorian imperialism? (2) How did the
mesmerists’ cultural positioning in mid-nineteenth-century society facilitate their Asian in-
quiries? And (3), are the mesmerists’ Oriental investigations precursors to the West’s twentieth-
century Asian meditation research? Before attempting to answer these questions, three
constraints that delimit the mesmerists’ work must be mentioned.
A key issue circumscribing mesmerism’s engagement with Chinese healers and Indian
ascetics is the pace of the movement’s murky dissolution. By the late 1850s, mesmerism as a
coherent movement was gradually dissolving by way of absorption into Spiritualism, hypno-
tism, and mental healing (Gauld, 1992; Schmit, 2005). Consequently, just as West–East inter-
change was accelerating, mesmerism was losing its distinctive identity.27
A second constraint deals with the character of the mesmerists’ source materials. With
the exception of Esdaile’s first-hand reports, they had to rely on secondary sources. Travelers’
and colonialists’ writings were of limited use because they rarely transcended the “imperial
gaze” that undergirded their journeys to the East (Pratt, 1992). Since missionaries in the Asian
field faced reprobation from Church authorities if they cast their inquiries in too sympathetic
a light (Johnston, 2003), with just a few exceptions, these materials, too, were of limited
value. That said, a fuller review of travelers’ and missionaries’ literatures is necessary to doc-
ument other possible ways Asian religio–mind–body practices are represented. Of special in-
terest is the diffusion of reports of Indian fakirs with special mind powers into Western
discourse.
A third constraint involved the mesmerists’ ongoing struggle with language. How to de-
scribe the psychological phenomena evinced in the trance state? Their appropriation of the
phrenology idiom notwithstanding, the problem hounded the mesmerists, resulting in a pro-
liferation of now long-forgotten neologisms (Fuller, 1982; Schmit, 2005). Given this predica-
ment, how could they describe unusual states in another culture? It is worth noting that by the
1850s the mesmerists were converging on states of consciousness as the common component
to unusual mental and spiritual phenomena, which in turn grounded their work in a psycho-
logical language that endured long after their movement passed (Crabtree, 1993; Schmit,
2005).28
These issues aside, what most distinguished the mesmerists’ inquiries from their gener-
ational peers—the Transcendentalists, Romantics, and Orientalists—who also “looked to the
East”? The answer lies in the synthesis of religious sensitivity, historical inclusiveness, at-
tempts at scientific inquiry, and mind–body medical application that the mesmerists brought
to their investigations. Indeed, the mesmerists’ attempts to form a coherent theory required
weaving together a disparate set of “raw data” which they uncovered in their empirical inves-
tigations. There were naturalistic physiological phenomena, the findings from psychologi-
cally oriented trance induction “experiments” involving the “manipulation of mental states,”
and the transcendental import of trance-like religious experience. The subsequent loosely
constructed theory espoused by the mesmerists, Edward Reed (1997, pp. 78–108) aptly calls
a naturalizing metaphysics.
There is little doubt that, like the Romantics and Transcendentalists, the mesmerists
played to their Victorian audience’s taste for Oriental exotica. And all three groups advanced
27. Assorted publications from the later decades of the nineteenth century document that mesmerism and hypnosis
were often presented side by side as variations on a similar theme. Gauld (1992) also describes a slow, gradual dis-
solution of the practice.
28. Variations on the “phenomena of consciousness” (Jackson, 1856) theme appeared with some frequency in their
literature, such as “unconsciousness” (Mitchell, 1859), “double consciousness” (Lloyd, 1847, p. 276; Sunderland,
1853, p. 13), and even “higher consciousness” (Haddock, 1849, pp. 71–72).

variants of an inclusivist approach towards the “Asian other.” The mesmerists’ hybrid meta-
physic, however, not only distinguished them from other Eastern investigators, but it provided
an angle of vision and an interpretive framework broad enough to “see” the value in these
Asian religio–mind–body practices. Whereas the Transcendentalists and European Romantics
incorporated high-minded features of Indian philosophy in their writings or used Orientalia
as a springboard for their literary fantasies, the mesmerists attended to similarities of practice
and “internal states” with the Indians. While American and European Oriental scholars and
philologists analyzed languages or wrote translations and commentaries on Asian texts
(McGetchin, 2003; Schwab, 1984), the mesmerists searched for evidence among fakirs and
Oriental physicians for commonalities in bodily states, medical practices, trance induction
procedures, and ecstatic states of being. The existing histories which explore the West–East
encounter make no mention of mesmerism’s engagement with Oriental mind powers,29 with
the exception of one small body of work examining Chinese medicine30 and a second de-
scribing the limits of Esdaile’s colonial medical practice.31
For select Westerners, the similarities between mesmerism, Chinese medicine, and
Hindu religio–mind–body practices provoked a revision of attitudes, a reconsideration of the
inferior placement of Asians within the Victorian worldview. This was the case for the long-
time resident of India, M. E. Bagnold (mentioned above). When he first saw Indian healers
inducing trance, he assumed it was “the workings of the imagination or religious imposture.”
He later understood it to be a version of “animal magnetism” (1845, p. 250). A respect is af-
forded Hindu ascetics in these colonial confessions, a recognition that they are practitioners
of intriguing disciplines and are accessing “mental powers” just like —and sometimes supe-
rior to—those evinced by the mesmerists. In a similar fashion, for the eighteenth-century
Jesuit Amiot, mesmerism provided the conceptual “bridge” which enabled him to absorb
elements of the Chinese vitalistic “qi paradigm” into his worldview (Barnes, 2005, p. 353).
Especially noteworthy is the fact that the mesmerists’ writings are relatively free of
Victorian racial attitudes of superiority toward the “Oriental Asiatics.” The mesmerists under
study here had opportunities to insert comments about the inferiority of the “Hindoo race” as
Esdaile did, but they did not. Instead, they bring an inclusiveness to their inquiry. True, the
mesmerists’ investigations were quite narrowly conceived requiring hedging the depth of
their spirit of inclusiveness. Still, their approach stands in contrast to central figures in
29. Contemporary works reviewed for this article which address the historical importation of Asian philosophy and
culture to the West and overlook the mesmerists’ Oriental inquiries include the following: Batchelor (1994), Battia
(2002), Christy (1963), Clarke (1997), Fields (1992), Halbfass (1988), Lach and Foss (1990), Leask (1992), Jackson
(1994, 1981), Schwab (1984), Tweed (1992), and Tweed and Prothero (1999). Works which address the history of
mesmerism and make no mention of investigations of Oriental mind powers include Crabtree (1993), Ellenberger
(1970), Fuller (1982), Pattie (1994), and Taves (1999). Other authors join mesmerism and Asian contemplative prac-
tices into one volume while proposing that the two represent a type of cultural tradition. Eugene Taylor (1999b)
posits that mid-century mesmerism, Swedenborgianism, and Spiritualism, along with a host of other nineteenth-
century movements (including late-century interest in Asian religions) are part of an American “shadow culture,”
which he likens to a “psychospiritual tradition” and “folk psychology.” Groups of mid-nineteenth-century Americans
did link spirituality to mesmerism (Fuller, 1982). Yet mesmerism also bled into far more arenas of American culture
than this realm alone, and its impact is larger. Anne Harrington’s The Cure Within (2008), on the history of
mind–body medicine, places mesmerism in a historically situated medical narrative framework that includes twen-
tieth-century interest in the therapeutic benefits of Asian meditation practice. Religious historian Robert Ellwood’s
Alternative Altars (1979) situates mid-century mesmerism, Spiritualism, and the late-nineteenth-century interest in
Asian religions in America as examples of unorthodox religion. Catherine Albanese (2007) also addresses mes-
merism in her work on American metaphysical religion. None of these authors, however, make any reference to mes-
merist inquiries of Oriental medicine or contemplative practices.
30. See Barnes (2005), Gauld (1992, pp. 221–225), Huard (1978), and Quen (1975).
31. See Ernst (1995, 2004), Gauld (1992), Prakash (1992), and Winter (1998).

20 DAVID T. SCHMIT
mid-nineteenth-century psychology such as Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Herbert

Spencer, and later G. Stanley Hall. Each advocated a strain of Victorian scientific racism that
relegated the non-Western racial and cultural “other” to an inferior position (Battia, 2002).
Why were the mesmerists more willing to recognize their affinity with the “Asian other”
than many of the elite intellectuals of the age? Was the need to legitimize their own practice
by way of establishing a universal mesmeric state the sole motivation to their cross-cultural
quest? Were meditating Hindus mere trance proxies in the mesmerists’ pursuit of universal ed-
ification and cultural respect? What about the implications of being “outsiders”? Did efforts
to marginalize the mesmerists by the European and American medical and intellectual ortho-
doxy provoke a rebellious “nothing to lose” sensibility which fostered sympathy for other
“outsiders”? Did this in turn create the impetus to challenge imperialistic attitudes? The an-
swer to all these questions is yes in varying degrees.
Winter (1998) documents how mesmerism entered nineteenth-century British culture
during a time of massive shifts in worldview, with the hold of the Church waning, the influ-
ence of the secular–scientific sector waxing, and the public expressing a mix of fascination
and incredulity toward the captivating specter of the trance. This position, Winter proposes,
made mesmerism “open to interpretation,” with advocates and detractors drawing disparate
meanings from the same phenomena. In a related way, David Schmit (2005) describes how
the simultaneous absorption of mesmerism by physicians, clergy, phrenologists, and freelance
intellectuals situated the practice in America at an unstable juncture where science, medicine,
and religion overlapped. Robert Fuller (1982) characterizes this region as a no-man’s land.
Jockeying for position on the shifting sacred and secular tectonic plates of Victorian so-
ciety provided opportunities for these mavericks to forge their own ideological allegiances.
With the enigmatic trance amplifying their uncertain situation, the mesmerists “groped”
through colonial literature and travelers’ tracts in pursuit of evidence of Enlightenment-
inspired universals to ground their practice in certain truth. The resulting Asian inquiries
simultaneously advanced the mesmerists’ cause while undermining imperial conventions
and secure ethnocentrisms. As such, the mesmerists can be placed within the camp of
progressively minded Victorians moving in the direction of a more culturally pluralistic world-
view—an appropriate placement, since the mesmerists saw themselves as forward-thinking re-
formers. Sunderland, for example, was a leading abolitionist before turning to mesmerism.
This leads to the next question: Is mesmerism a precursor to Western twentieth-century
Asian meditation research? Looking forward from mid-century, the mesmerists’ writings on
Oriental mind powers certainly contributed to the late nineteenth-century construction of
“metaphysical Asia.” And through its impact on hypnosis, spiritualism, and, indirectly,
psychic research, it influenced the turn-of-the-century development of the psychology of con-
sciousness. That said, there are intriguing similarities between mesmerism and later medita-
tion research suggesting conceptual and methodological historical continuities. For example,
when the nineteenth-century physician John Kearsley Mitchell (1859) investigated the mes-
meric trance by first recording his subjects’ baseline rates of pulse and respiration, followed
by the same measures while in trance, he was practicing a pre- and post-treatment methodol-
ogy for studying the physical effects of “mental states” that is structurally the same as Herbert
Benson’s (1975) twentieth-century psychophysiological meditation research. Yet the under-
lying philosophy informing their respective views, despite the fact that both interpreted their
findings in a way deemed naturalistic, highlights differences between the two eras and un-
derscores diverging views of human nature.
Nineteenth-century interpretations of mesmeric phenomena were wrapped up in bodily
electromagnetic nerve currents woven into an amalgam of ideas drawn from metaphysical

idealism, phrenology, romantic notions of the power of the will, and the “force of character”
effecting mesmeric changes. As the century progressed and vitalistic power was drained from
the trance, so too were notions of will power and “soul force” gradually marginalized
from emerging academic psychological discourse. By the twentieth century, psychophysio-
logical changes are framed in more biomechanistic, stimulus–response neuropsychological
responses. Cognitive abilities, in turn, are framed as an expression of expertise. Instead of
describing his Tibetan Buddhist advanced meditators as “adepts” with extraordinary “mind
powers”—typical of a mesmerist—contemporary researcher Davidson calls them “mental
athletes” who have practiced the necessary 10,000 hours to become experts, yielding highly
refined “cognitive skills” (Boyce, 2005, p. 39). Arguably, this shift from a vitalistic soul with
mind powers to an expertly trained, biomechanistic mind is partly responsible for obscuring
the mesmerists’ inquiries.
There are other intriguing cross-century parallels between the practices. Mesmerism and
meditation (and hypnotism) are what could be called “internal regulating techniques”
(Schmit, 2005, p. 419). All three therapeutically treat “nervous disorders,” addictions, and
other illnesses of body and mind through “mental therapeutics.” All three practices draw in-
vestigators to difficult questions about how mind and body interact to illicit such changes.
Each system is a readily learned and widely disseminated psychological technique offering
an appealing experiential dimension to practitioners. Each offers implicit opportunities to
enhance self-control, which wraps all three practices in an ethos of self-improvement.
Numerous other parallels exist, such as their positioning within their respective cultural eras
and the way phenomena associated with each conjoin them to the consciousness question (and
the scientific predicament that entails). A fuller analysis of the historical record may reveal
whether the naturalistic framework for investigating mind–body phenomena introduced by
the mesmerists and advanced by the hypnotists formed a conceptual and methodological sub-
strate upon which twentieth-century meditation research was instituted.
Summing up, the mesmerists’ tenuous position on ill-defined Victorian intellectual ter-
rain afforded them creative license. This, in turn, provoked innovations in theory and practice
which many orthodox intellectuals and medical elites rejected. By offering an alternative to
“regular medicine” and an alternate etiology to prevailing medical models of nervous disor-
ders, mesmerism undermined the authority of mid-century physicians. Through its naturalis-
tic interpretations of supernatural miracles and elicitation of religious feelings in
practitioners, mesmerism dissented from Judeo-Christianity’s religious hegemony in the
West. By arguing that the unusual mental phenomena evinced in the trance could be under-
stood scientifically, the mesmerists advanced an early—and controversial—application of the
scientific method. It is not surprising, then, that the mesmerists struggled for respectability,
in part, it is argued here, because their work did not fit neatly into the orthodoxy’s conceptual
and professional frameworks. Yet the mesmerists’ position as outsiders likely fostered their
novel Asian inquiries. The cross-cultural parallels between Oriental meditation and mesmeric
trance practice inadvertently strengthened the mesmerists’ subversive hand. They believed
that Chinese physicians and meditating Indians possessed common interests and were en-
gaged in similar practices. Not to be forgotten in this story are the Hindu yogis and Chinese
healers who shared their knowledge and rendered their practices available to Westerners.
Without their contributions, these cultural exchanges would not have occurred, and this story
remains incomplete.
Evidence provided in this article allows a polemical assertion of mesmerism into the his-
tory of West-meets-East. Not only are the mesmerists overlooked figures in this history, but
compared to other mid-nineteenth-century Westerners investigating Asian culture, the

22 DAVID T. SCHMIT
mesmerists’ inquiry is clearly the most psychological in character. The mesmerists’ edifica-
tion of endogenous Asian contemplative practices carries prototypical ingredients of a cul-
turally pluralistic vision. By placing Oriental mind powers favorably within their worldview,
the mesmerists left a positive impression of Chinese healers and Indian yogis as their equals.
Such views chipped away at the artifices of Western cultural imperialism by offering a sub-
versive alternative to the “scientific racism” of the Victorian era. A case can be made that
mesmerism, despite its limited focus on Oriental medicine and Hindu meditative practices,
deserves a place within the history of the social sciences’ struggle to reach beyond limiting
ethnocentric worldviews.
The degree to which historians of psychology are willing to incorporate mesmerism into
the “grand narrative” of the psychological tradition is the degree to which it can be offered as
an alternative to nineteenth-century academic psychology’s scientific racism. Such reposition-
ing, however, will require historians to revise the view that mesmerism is a marginal sideline to
the “real” history of the field. All told, mesmerism’s role in the history of psychology deserves
to be enlarged to include a description of their pioneering inquiry into Oriental mind powers.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Courtney Kellerman for help with the French translation. An earlier version
of this paper was presented at the 36th annual meeting of Cheiron: The International Society
for the History of the Behavioral Sciences, Akron, Ohio, June 2004.
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46(1), 1–26 Winter 2010

THE MESMERISTS INQUIRE ABOUT “ORIENTAL MIND POWERS”:

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MEDITATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN THE WEST

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THE MESMERISTS’ ORIENTAL INQUIRIES

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Psychological Mysteries of the Hindoos

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mid-nineteenth-century psychology such as Francis Galton, Charles Darwin, Herbert

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