The Rise and Fall of the Paranormal

Psychology struggled to be seen as a real science here at the turn of this entry, it stumbled quite a few times. The idea that one could speak with a dead child through a medium had offered comfort in a time when that comfort was something people of means were newly willing to pay for. Mesmerism, animal magnetism, all these pseudo-scientific attempts to assuage the anxiety brought about by this scientific change, became the focus of scientific investigation.