Biomedicine and Belief: Spiritualism, Observation, and Margery Crandon’s Extraordinary Body c.1920–35
Summary: This interdisciplinary research project is the first scholarly exploration of the ‘Crandon case’: the testing of the notorious Boston-based spiritualist medium ‘Margery’ Crandon in the years c.1920–35 by a transatlantic team of researchers with medical and scientific pedigree. During séances, ‘Margery’ seemingly produced mysterious physical emanations such as ‘ectoplasm’ from her bodily orifices. Spiritualists like herself believed these to be materialisations of deceased souls. She drew the attention of serious researchers, keen to debunk or verify these extraordinary biological phenomena and so test the empirical reality of her spiritualist claims. This project aims to establish the precise nature of the relationship between biomedicine and heterodox belief in the Crandon case — an important study in the history of the intersections between science and popular belief systems like spiritualism lying outside traditional religion — and assess scope for a future project on medicine and occultic belief. Its research questions are:
