Conférencier afro-descendant en mesmérisme

Conférencier afro-descendant en mesmérisme.

“This is one of four offensive caricatures that use ethnicity as the context for ridiculing contemporary pseudo-science. By making the lecturer black and using racist language and style in the accompanying ‘lecture’ text, the series attacks the fashion for scientific, and pseudo-scientific lectures and the subjects being presented. They play on attributes then stereotypically seen as being inherent to the black population, including drunkenness, dirt, thieving, lechery and lack of education. This lecture focuses on mesmerism (or animal magnetism), a form of therapy developed by Franz Mesmer in the 18th century that was thought to induce a trance-like state by shifting energy between practitioner and client. It was widely seen as a money-making con, which the lecture makes clear by suggesting that it is the magnetism that brings metal objects into the thieving hands of the black audience” (source : https://collection.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/co8014517).