Sie befinden Sich nicht im Netzwerk der Universität Paderborn. Der Zugriff auf elektronische Ressourcen ist gegebenenfalls nur via VPN oder Shibboleth (DFN-AAI) möglich. mehr Informationen...
Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, and Isaac Pulvermacher’s “Magic Band”
Ist Teil von
Progress in Brain Research, 2013, Vol.205, p.219-239
Ort / Verlag
Netherlands: Elsevier Science & Technology
Erscheinungsjahr
2013
Link zum Volltext
Quelle
MEDLINE
Beschreibungen/Notizen
Around 1850, Isaac L. Pulvermacher (1815–1884) joined the ranks of so-called “galvanists” who had, for nearly a century, been touting the shocks and sparks of electricity as a miracle cure for all ills, including neurological complaints such as palsy and hemiplegia. The famed authors, Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880), in France, and Charles Dickens (1812–1870), in England, although contemporaries, apparently never met or corresponded. But during their lives, they both became aware of Pulvermacher and his patented Hydro-Electric Chains, claimed to impart vigor and cure nearly every complaint. Pulvermacher’s chains made a cameo appearance in Madame Bovary (1857), Flaubert’s controversial (and most successful) novel. Among Dickens’s last letters (1870) was an order for I. L. Pulvermacher and Company’s “magic band.” Since the Victorian age, electrical and magnetic cures, for better or worse, continue to be products of both the medical profession and quackery.