The Medium and the Scientist: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes

Trevor H. Hall's The Medium and the Scientist, The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes, published by Prometheus Books in 1984, is a scholarly historical study of the Victorian medium Florence Cook and her investigation by the chemist and physicist William Crookes, who controversially endorsed some of her purported materialization phenomena. Its authority rests on Hall's own extensive documentary research into this specific case within the history of Victorian spiritualism and psychical research. Its limit is that Prometheus Books, while a real publisher with a long history in this subject area, is a press associated with skeptical inquiry into paranormal claims rather than a general academic university press, so Hall's own critical framing of the case, which reads Crookes's endorsement skeptically, should be understood as the book's own argued position within a still discussed historical episode rather than a neutral chronicle.