Text: Edgar Allan Poe (?), “Literary” (A), from the Weekly Mirror (New York), December 14, 1844, vol. 1, no. 10, p. 146, col. 3

[page 146, column 3, continued:]

LITERARY.

[[...]]

PROFESSOR GRIMES’S ETHEROLOGY; OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERISM. — We opened this book with a strong prejudice against it, expecting to see the usual parade of wonderful performances; but we were agreably [[agreeably]] disappointed. The professor has taken up the subject de novo, and, instead of following in the old beaten track of Mesmer and Deluze, Buchanan and the rest, he has attempted to bring the facts of mesmerism and of phrenology into harmony with the known and admitted laws of electricity and magnetism. At first it seems impossible to reduce such apparently heterogeneous facts and assumptions as those which constitute the work of Mesmerism, to anything like a science. But Professor Grimes has done this with a degree of ingenuity and plausibility, to say the least, which commands our admiration of his talents, even if we cannot fully assent to his conclusions. If we are not greatly mistaken, this work will excite much discussion and lead to important results.