![]() ![]() The reader is told that Valdemar has a particularly nervous temperament which makes him a good candidate for the narrator’s experiments. The narrator chooses as a subject of his experiment his friend, Earnest Valdemar, a renowned author and complier who, apart from being a willing subject to P’s previous mesmeric experiments, has also been recently diagnosed with terminal tuberculosis and certified to die in the near future. ![]() His curiosity peaks at the thought of witnessing whether at the moment of death, any susceptibility towards magnetic influence might exist and if it does exist, does the patient’s physical condition aid or hamper the trance-like state, and finally, for how long might death be arrested or deferred in the mesmerizing condition. Around nine months prior to the writing of this story, however, it dawns on him that there has been no precedence of attempting to put a dying person in a mesmeric trance in articulo mortis i.e., at the moment of death. Around three years preceding the actual action of the story, the narrator informs us, he had suddenly developed an interest in the pseudoscientific method of Mesmerism, a precursor to modern hypnotism. Valdemar, which the narrator intends to bring to light the actual facts of the case which has apparently caused a scandalous uproar in public. P in the story, the narration begins a few months after the death of M. Written in first-person narrative with a narrator whose identity is not disclosed, identified only as Mr. ![]()
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