This volume traces the global diffusion and reinterpretation of animal magnetism (mesmerism) between the late eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth. It presents the essence of research undertaken since 2013 in two successive collaborative projects involving the editors: Harmonia Universalis: For a Prosopography of the Actors of the Mesmerist Movement and from the Mesmerian Movement to the Magnetist International (18th–19th Centuries). Since the conception of mesmerism combines a theoretical framework with a set of therapeutic techniques, most contributions focus on practitioner–theoreticians, though artistic and literary representations of mesmerism are also addressed.

The chapters are organized into four thematic sections: ‘Circles, networks, circulation’, ‘Therapeutic uses and issues’, ‘Political and social uses and issues’, and ‘Magnetism between artistic practices and literary representations’. The regions covered include France, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Spain (with glimpses of Latin America), India and the United States. The introduction also offers perspectives on other regions, such as Eastern Europe. The unifying motif throughout the volume is the conception of animal magnetism as a theory of circulation: mesmerism concerns the circulation of a universal fluid within both humans and the cosmos, and it also circulates geographically – as a concept and a practice – across social strata and epistemic boundaries.

The introduction offers a concise overview of the current debate on the reception history of mesmerism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Germany, France and Italy. Among the many stimulating aspects of the volume, only a few may be highlighted here – especially those not directly reflected in the titles of the main sections. Markus Meumann and Olaf Simons present the Paris diary of Johann Joachim Christoph Bode from Weimar, who accidentally encountered mesmerism in 1787 during a stay in the French capital and was compelled to define his own position between scepticism and belief. Kapil Raj’s contribution on the use of mesmerism as an anaesthetic by the Scottish physician James Esdaile in India challenges the notion – common in colonial studies – of a static opposition between colonial and indigenous medical practices. Bastiaan van Rijn explores the relationship between mesmerism and new religious currents through a case study of the American scholar George Bush (1796–1856), who regarded the visions of somnambulists in magnetic sleep as confirmation of his Swedenborgian beliefs.

A particularly surprising insight emerges from Kaat Wils’s chapter on animal magnetism in Belgium, which reveals the comparatively tolerant attitude of Catholicism towards mesmerism in that country. David Armando demonstrates how animal magnetism underwent a striking reinvention of its own tradition in France during the Restoration of 1814, while Andrea Ceci examines the opposite side of the political spectrum. She shows the significant role of mesmerism in the systems of the early (or ‘Romantic’) socialists Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, and introduces the reader to Jules de Rovère, a socialist magnetizer. While gender aspects are implicitly addressed in several contributions, Nicole Edelman devotes an entire chapter to the question whether animal magnetism altered relations between men and women. Her answer is a cautious yes: she argues that the trance-like state of magnetic sleep provided women with a rare opportunity to speak publicly on subjects and in ways normally deemed unacceptable. Those women capable of inducing the trance themselves were thus able to gain a measure of autonomy through mesmerism. Literary representations of animal magnetism feature not only in the final main section but also throughout the volume. The discussion focuses on the works of Alexandre Dumas, Honoré de Balzac, Georg Büchner, Adalbert Stifter and Edgar Allan Poe. Mélanie Traversier adds a musicological perspective through her study of the rise and fall of the glass harmonica – a musical instrument whose effects on listeners were contemporaneously associated with mesmerism.

The chapters are not intended as systematic textbook introductions but rather as explorations of new and often virtually unresearched topics, figures and regions. Nevertheless, the reader gains a global perspective on mesmerism as a medical, cultural and political phenomenon up to around 1850. As Animal Magnetism in Motion primarily addresses the later phases of mesmerism – when it was already undergoing transformation and the concept of hypnotism was emerging – the volume is not primarily intended for beginners. However, it will remain for years to come an important point of reference for scholars with a particular interest in mesmerism and in the history of science, knowledge and nineteenth-century culture. The extensive bibliographies accompanying each chapter provide valuable starting points for further research. Contributions are in both English and French, and the volume includes abstracts in both languages. The publication is available in Open Access as well as in a hardcover print edition. Typography, image quality and copy-editing meet contemporary academic standards; a few minor misprints do not detract from the book’s usability.