An itinerant mesmerist

Mesmerism had its roots in late 18th century France, but it was not until the 1830s in Britain that it was systematically applied to the problem of pain. The application of mesmerism in the clinical setting was extremely contentious and it was with some relief that doctors turned to the far more consistent results of chemical anaesthesia. However, though mesmerism were superseded by chemical anaesthetic agents in many areas of application, mesmerism continued to have a life during the second half of the 19th century. In the 1850s, the decade following the introduction of ether and chloroform, Dr John Elliotson established the London Mesmeric Infirmary, in which he used mesmerism both therapeutically and for pain relief, and established a training programme for apprentice mesmerists. In the mid-1890s on the other side of the globe, Mr Newham Waterworth travelled from Tasmania up the east coast of Australia, performing public demonstrations of mesmerism for pain relief during dental extractions. The first of these took place in Hobart in 1890, more than 40 years after many in Britain had declared mesmerism dead. The extractions were performed by respected dentists and, according to witnesses, Waterworth's mesmerism produced the same effects of insensibility to pain as ether and chloroform. With an examination of the continued application of mesmerism after the advent of chemical anaesthesia, this paper will focus on the work of Newham Waterworth in the 1890s and speculate as to why mesmerism might have resurfaced to some appeal in the Australian colonies in this period.