Series of pieces originally published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1847 covering a range of superstitious beliefs, “… the divining rod, vampyrism, the belief in ghosts and dreams, second-sight, supposed workings of the holy spirit on masses, possession by devils… witchcraft. The truths expounded are, the Od force, the law of sensorial illusions, the laws of trance.”
Mayo trained at the Middlesex Hospital and in Leyden and had a distinguished career as a physiologist, “… surgeon of the Middlesex Hospital from 1827 until 1842, professor of anatomy and surgery to Royal College of Surgeons 1828 and 1829, F.R.S. 1828, F.G.S. 1832, and his name appears in the first list of fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1843. On the establishment of King’s College in 1830 he received the appointment of Professor of Anatomy, and he became Professor of Physiology and Pathological Anatomy in 1836.” [DNB]. He applied for the vacant Professorship at University College in 1836, and this rather ill-judged gesture necessitated his withdrawal from King’s College. He then founded the Medical School at the Middlesex Hospital, which came to have a fine reputation.
In 1843 he was forced to retire by the increasing debilitation brought on by rheumatism. Finding relief in hydrotherapy, he became physician at a hydropathic clinic in Boppart and later Bad Wellbach, where he was to die in 1852. Mayo “…became convinced of the reality and clinical usefulness of mesmerism. His views… were often greeted with scorn and contempt; the author of the entry on Mayo in DNB spoke of Mayo as having “thrown himself in the hands of the mesmerists”. In [the present work] Mayo wrote that “As it is certain that there is no disease, which the nervous system is not primarily or secondarily implicated in, it is impossible to foresee what will prove the limit of the beneficial application of mesmerism in practice.” [ODNB] Views far more harmonious with current thinking than with that of his established contemporaries.
This copy with a poignant, if unsigned, authorial inscription; “To Mrs. Hodnett, With heartfelt Thanks for all her kindness to a crippled & useless Invalid. Boppart, Nov. 15th 1850.”
Later armorial bookplate of [Sir] Robert Garnett Head [Bt.].
