Having gained fame in England as a mind reader, Maud Lancaster came to New York City to perform in 1893. Nellie Bly, investigating for the New York World, quickly discovered that Lancaster’s telepathy act involved a confederate giving secret signals. Bly donned a blindfold, performed the signature trick herself, and published a front-page exposé about the events under a headline reading “Miss Lancaster, Who Astonished All London, Finds the World  ’s Young Woman Too Much for Her.”

The Communist Party of China considered “revolution in mind” a prerequisite for political emancipation in the 1940s. Work reports tell of “speaking bitterness” sessions—in which peasants would share stories of their oppression—sometimes referred to as “turn-over-mind meetings.” The meetups later served as inspiration for feminist consciousness-raising groups in the United States during the 1970s.

At a hospital in Milledgeville, Georgia, in 1952, a Dr. Hatcher tried to convince a Dr. Cranford to watch him perform a transorbital lobotomy. “Nothing to it,” Hatcher said. “I take a sort of medical ice pick, hold it like this, bop it through the bones just above the eyeball, push it up into the brain, swiggle it around, cut the brain fibers like this, and that’s it.” Cranford responded, “I was going to breakfast, but I’ve changed my mind.” Hatcher laughed. “You can change your mind,” he said, “but not like I can change it.”

For the treatment of “delirium and mania combined with shameless behavior,” ninth-century Persian polymath al-Razi offered a remedy by medical theorist Simʿun: “Bathe the patient’s head with a decoction of elecampane and sheep’s trotters, pour milk over him, put dung upon him, make him snuff sweet violet oil and breast milk, and feed him anything that is cold, fatty, and fills and moistens the brain.”