The story first appeared in the American Whig Review (December 1845), followed by the London Morning Post (5 January 1846). It follows two mesmeric tales Poe wrote the previous year, "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" and "Mesmeric Revelation" the latter has been described as "milk and water" versus the present tale, an "incomparably revolting account of the too-long-delayed death of M. Taking it to be factual, people seriously debated whether such a horrifying use of mesmerism was possible, and condemned it on the assumption that it was" (Waterfield, p. Poe plays with the idea that a dying person may be so imbued with magnetic fluid by a mesmerist that he can remain, though dead, in a kind of suspended death for months, until released by the mesmerist. The macabre tale "provoked huge controversy. Poe "was one of the few American writers to employ Mesmer's original notion of animal magnetism instead of the more common practice of hypnotism" (Enns, p. Written in the style of a scientific text, and published in the Popular Record of Modern Science (10 January 1846), it was received by some as a literary hoax and by others as a terrifying, yet legitimate, contribution to scientific inquiry. Scarce first edition in book form of the tale better known as "Facts in the Case of M.
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