'A Black Lecture on Mesmerism', c 1880s.

A caricature with text depicting a 'lecture' on how to hypnotise black people, taken from one of John Follitt's 'Black Lectures' ridiculing the speech of black people and playing on existing prejudices against them. The term 'mesmerism' relates to the work of an Austrian doctor, Franz Anton Mesmer, who was a pioneer of scientific investigation of hypnosis in the 1770s.