Famous hypnotist posters

The nineteenth century, the Age of Progress, during which there is a gradual “secularization of the European mind”, is paradoxically also a period in which a large portion of the population renewed their aquaintance with the supernatural. Writing in the aftermath of the first world war, George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) recalled the last forty years of the nineteenth century (along with the first decade of the next) as being: “superstitious, and addicted to table-rapping, materialization séances, clairvoyance, palmistry, crystal-gazing and the like to such an extent that it may be doubted whether ever before in the history of the world did sooth-sayers, astrologers, and unregistered therapeutic specialists of all sorts flourish as they did during this half century of the drift to the abyss”.