Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Volume 3 by Charles MackayMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Overall, this is my least favorite of the three volumes of Mackay's epic investigation, although it is worth reading with an end that balances the beginning. This volume covers alchemists, fortune-tellers, and animal magnetism. The alchemists are treated with a series of quick, paragraph biographies like reading something from Tebbo (publisher of a number of "What You Need to Know..." books repackaging Wikipedia content). Fortune-tellers is a bit better, but Mackay does not get into his usual stride until he deals with the "mummery" of the quack science of animal magnetism. The dissection of this combination of (self-?)hypnosis, feigning, and hysteria is fascinating with the introduction of blind and even double-blind tests to show the pseudoscience for what it is. Overall, this book made me again see the 19th Century as a fascinating time of science pushing light into the dark corners and how long the history is of baseless beliefs that lead people to even now read horoscopes and pay good money to converse with a "psychic".
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