From the Archives
The Science of the Supernatural Simone Natale
In September 1985, Roy Porter published an essay in History Today where he outlined the impact of mesmerism in late-eighteenth-century England. Mesmerism was a theory conceived in the late eighteenth century by German physician Franz Anton Mesmer. It pointed to the existence of a hidden force, animal magnetism, that binds the universe together and also regulates the inner balance within the human body. A historian of medicine, Porter was drawn to this subject by Mesmer’s and his acolytes’ therapeutic approach. They believed, in fact, that health was associated to the free flow of animal magnetism in the body, and illness to its obstruction or imbalance. In pointing to the relevance of unorthodox practices for the history of medicine, however, Porter was
contributing to a broader direction of historical research that would flourish in the following three decades: the study of the impact and significance of “occult” beliefs and practices. Works such as Janet Oppenheim’s The Other World (1985), Ann Braude’s Radical Spirits (1989), or Jeffrey Sconce’s Haunted Media (2000) have become important references for historians of religion, science, politics, and media, inserting into the core of historical inquiry aspects that were often left at its margins. In his article, Porter anticipates many of the key problems that were to be discussed and questioned by these and other authors. He
documents, for instance, how mesmerist practitioners combined healing “with party-piece hypnotising tricks,” and demonstrations of mesmerism mingled into forms of public
entertainments. In my own research, I investigated the close relationship between beliefs in spirits and the emergence of the modern entertainment industry in the nineteenth century. I documented how spiritualist mediums used many of the performance and promotional strategies that were being developed at the time within the show business. They had managers who worked in the entertainment sector, and performed in theatres and public halls before paying publics. While we tend to draw a rigid line between performances that invite belief and those that aim to amuse the public, the cases of spiritualism and, as Porter’s article suggests, of mesmerism demonstrate that belief and entertainment may combine, rather than contrasting with each other.
Another crucial issue stressed by Porter is mesmerism’s controversial relationship with science. He perceptively notes that “at heart Mesmer was an orthodox somatic physician who regarded animal magnetism as a material force equivalent to light, heat, or fire within the Newtonian laws of nature.” Notwithstanding his failure to provide evidence that could convince the scientific establishment, Mesmer’s belief in mesmeric fluids did not contrast with his commitment to science. Likewise, as authors such as John Warne Monroe and Sophie Lachapelle have shown, believers in spiritualism considered themselves to be adept to a “scientific religion.” They gave much emphasis to the collection of evidences supporting their claim that it is possible to communicate with the spirits of the dead, and refused to consider their doctrine as “supernatural”: it was only time, they pointed out, before spirit communication would be accepted as a natural and scientific fact.
The questioning and inventive gaze of historians such as Roy Porter has had a powerful impact on the way we think and imagine modern and contemporary societies and particularly the Victorian age, often characterized as a locus for supernatural and occult explorations. In looking for the significance of this body of work, however, we should not imply that such explorations pertain to a distant past. When presenting on my research in the area, I am often asked why spiritualism was so prominent in the nineteenth century, and is so insignificant today. I answer that this is simply not true. Polls and social studies show that beliefs in the supernatural are still extremely widespread in our societies, and religious faiths drawing directly from spiritualism’s doctrine attract millions of believers in countries such as Brazil. As some point out, after all, the present interest in Victorian culture might tell us something about ourselves: we are intrigued by Victorian society because we feel it conveys elements of our own identity and culture. In this sense, the historians’ involvement in the study of the occult can be seen as an attempt to understand the past as much as the present. The emergence of a strong body of works in this area is therefore not a sign of a historical discipline that becomes increasingly esoteric. It responds, on the contrary, to the call of thinkers such as Marc Bloch, who never ceased to point out that a historian will never be able to comprehend the past, if ignorant of the present.
Simone Natale’s monograph Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture was published by Pennsylvania State University Press in February 2016.
