Rufus Osgood Mason

Rufus Osgood Mason (1830 to 1903) was an American physician, surgeon and teacher, born in Sullivan, New Hampshire, who practised in New York City. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1854, spent a year at Union Theological Seminary, and took his medical degree at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York in 1859. He served as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy aboard the USS Santiago de Cuba from 1861 to 1864 and then practised in New York, where he became known as one of the most noted surgeons of his day. In later life he wrote on metaphysical subjects and became an early researcher in parapsychology and hypnotherapy. A contributing member of the Society for Psychical Research, he published Telepathy and the Subliminal Self in 1897, which helped popularise the ideas of Frederic Myers in the United States.