The Philosophy of Mystery

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1845. First American Edition. Hard Cover. Fair/No Jacket. First American edition. Lacks backstrip, binding edge of boards discolored from an ill-fated attempt to adhere a new one, edges rubbed with some loss, library bookplates and stamp on front endpapers, embossed owner stamp on title page. 1845 Hard Cover. vi, [7]-442, [4] pp. Brown cloth with gilt and blind-stamped decorations and borders. 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.