In 1880s France, hypnotism enjoyed unique medico-scientific legitimacy. This was in striking contrast to preceding decades when its precursor, magnetisme animal, was rejected by the medical/academic establishment as a disreputable, supernaturally tinged practice. Did the legitimation of hypnotism result from researchers repudiating any reference to the wondrous? Or did strands of magnetic thinking persist? This article interrogates the relations among hypnotism, magnetisme, and the domain of the wondrous through close analysis of scientific texts on hypnotism. In question is the notion that somnambulist subjects possessed hyperacute senses, enabling them to perceive usually imperceptible signs, and thus inadvertently to denature researchers' experiments (a phenomenon known as unconscious suggestion). The article explores researchers' uncritical and unanimous acceptance of these ideas, arguing that they originate in a holdover from magnetisme. This complicates our understanding of the continuities and discontinuities between science and a precursor pseudo-science, and, more narrowly, of the notorious Salpetriere-Nancy battle over hypnotism.
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