The Hypnosis Fever of the Late 19th Century

In her lecture, Cecilia Riving, Associate Professor of History at Lund University, talks about the golden age of hypnosis. Hypnosis gained enormous popularity as a medical treatment method in the 1880s, both in Sweden and across Europe. But hypnosis was also a pop culture phenomenon, with traveling hypnotists drawing large crowds. In the press and fiction, this mysterious power was portrayed as both enticing and frightening. How can we understand the dual nature of hypnosis? And how has it left its mark on our own time?