Utilising the Imagination as Therapy

Chapter
First Online:
Part of the Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in Modern History book series (MBSMH)

Abstract

Georgian physicians often recognised that a medical therapy, particularly a patent medicine, was more effective than the sum of its pharmaceutical constituents. In the language of the time, this benefit was produced by changes in the ‘imagination’ which in turn were influenced by the ‘passions’; and this chapter reviews the development of this concept over the eighteenth century, employing reports on Animal Magnetism and Perkins’s Tractors as practical examples. This effect of the imagination is historically and culturally separate from the later placebo response. Unlike regular or irregular medical practice which depended on oral communication, the printed word altered the imagination of patent medicine consumers, and so print should be regarded as a therapeutic agent, alongside the pharmaceuticals.

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Copyright information

© The Author(s) 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Centre for History and Philosophy of ScienceUniversity of LeedsLeedsUK

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