La diffusione del mesmerismo nell’ambiente culturale napoletano

Federigo Verdinois (1844-1927) was an Italian journalist, translator and writer, one of the most influent intellectuals of the Neapolitan milieu in the post-unification years. He published a collection of short stories in 1886 entitled Racconti inverisimili di Picche, which manifest his interest in spiritism and, particularly, mesmerism. Mesmerism, a therapeutic practice based on magnetism and theorized at the end of the 18th century by the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer (1734-1815), enjoyed considerable success in Italy in the 1870s and 1880s. In this paper, I analyse the particular forms that Mesmerism took in the Neapolitan milieu, focusing on Verdinois’ Racconti inverisimili.