Recovery from beyond: Spiritualism as a countermovement to medicine

From the 1880s on the novelist and pedagogue Elise van Calcar (1822-1904) became a leading figure in Dutch spiritualism. Many of the communications she claimed to receive from the departed dealt with medical affairs. It is argued that spiritualism acted as a counter movement to orthodox medicine, advocating hygienistic methods and cures instead of pharmacological or surgical treatment. Van Calcar's publications are a valuable source of information on an undercurrent of medical thinking which is otherwise badly documented, to the point of invisibility