The mesmerists inquire about "Oriental mind powers": West meets East in the search for the universal trance.

Contemporary interest in Asian meditation raises questions about when Westerners began investigating these practices. A synopsis of Western-originating scientific meditation research is followed by a brief introduction to mesmerism. Next, the unappreciated ways the mesmerists explored Oriental mind powers is recounted. How the mesmerists' cultural positioning, philosophy, and interest in mind-body practices facilitated their inquiries of Oriental medicine and Hindu contemplative practices is explored, followed by a consideration of why these investigations were unique for the era. The way this work subverted Western cultural imperialism is examined. A consideration of the historical continuities and discontinuities between the mesmerists' inquiries and twentieth-century meditation research concludes the article.

Warren Felt Evans: 19th-century mystic, wounded healer, and seminal theorist-practitioner of mind cure.

The Methodist-Episcopalian minister-turned-physician and philosopher of healing Warren Felt Evans (1817-1889) was one of the earliest practitioners of mental healing, also known as "mind cure." Originating in New England in the second half of the 19th century, mind cure spread through the country in the 1880s. Drawing from Evans's unpublished journals, I recount his struggles with chronic ill health and his turn to the Quietist mystics and Swedenborg, and then to the mesmerist-turned-mental-healer P. P. Quimby to procure both healing for his ills and philosophical sanctification for his soul. The transformational route Evans traveled reflects the mythico-religious journey of the wounded healer who suffers through a creative illness on the way to becoming a healer himself. The article places Evans and the mind cure movement within late-19th-century Boston's medical and cultural milieu. Evans's approach to psychological healing is explored by focusing on his mind-body healing philosophy and mental therapeutics as described in his first 2 mind cure books The Mental Cure (1869) and Mental Medicine (1872). (PsycINFO Database Record