At the beginning of 1778, the Viennese physician Franz Anton Mesmer arrived in Paris. Having settled in the city, he began to preach a seemingly rather strange theory of healing, which almost instantly took hold of the public's consciousness. Although Mesmer's fame was fleeting, his teaching played an important role in the change in public sentiment, when the "age of reason" gave way to the era of romanticism. In his fascinating work, Harvard professor Robert Darnton traces the connections of mesmerism to radical political thought, esoteric movements, and ideas about science in 18th-century France. First published in 1968, this book was Darnton's first and still relevant study to raise the question of the channels and mechanisms of circulation of ideas in modern Europe. Robert Darnton is one of the leading experts on French history, professor emeritus at Harvard and Princeton, former director of the Harvard University Library.MESMERISM AND THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE Robert Darnton Copyright © 1968 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Published by arrangement with Harvard University Press