The Philosophy of Mystery

London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longmans. / Gilbert and Rivington, Printers, 1841. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. First edition. Spine crudely repaired by previous owner, splits still showing along both joints, discoloration to base and fore edge of both boards, bookplate of M.K. Welch and four small sticker remnants on front endpaper. 1841 Hard Cover. xii, 443 pp., 16-page catalog of medical works bound in following text. Black cloth with blind-stamped decorations and borders, gilt titles. Written by a surgeon known for his culture and literary taste, who wrote about twenty works on topics from medicine and the sciences to poetry and travel. This is "a treatise on dreams, spectral illusions, and other imperfect manifestations of the mind" (Dictionary of National Biography) which also discusses fairy mythology, demons, ghosts, witchcraft, memory, sleep-walking and -talking, trance / catalepsy, transmigration of the soul, and mesmerism / hypnotism.