John Bovee Dods

Background

John Bovee Dods was born in 1795 in New York City, New York, United States. He was of a Swiss Huguenot family called Beaufils, but adopted the name Dods from a Dutchman who married his aunt.

Career

Dods preached many years in Levant, Penobscot County, Maine, early dabbling in new and strange theories, particularly concerned with psychic phenomena, and continually expounding these theories from the pulpit.

In 1836 he moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts, and began to preach universalism. He published a volume entitled Thirty Short Sermons On Various Important Subjects, Doctrinal and Practical, in which he defended his universalistic ideas. His universalism was soon eclipsed by his theories on psychic phenomena. Like Dr. Edward Coit Rogers, he at first tried to explain these phenomena neurologically, but whereas Rogers emphasized the action of the cerebrum under the action of a certain “odic force, ” Dods emphasized the “automatic action of the cerebellum” under some sort of electrical influence.

Hardly had he gotten his cerebellum theory well launched than he abandoned it and joined the spiritualist movement and church.

His interest was chiefly in the medical problems connected with mental disorders. He was commonly called Dr. Dods, though he was merely an amateur physician, practising on his congregations and on his family.

Achievements

• Dods was one of the first to use electricity for therapeutic purposes. He continually carried on experiments in drugs, hypnotism, massage, etc. , and gained a sufficient reputation and income from his various devices to enable his widow to build up a practise with them.

Works

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• book

  • Six Lectures on the Philosophy of Mesmerism, Delivered in the Marlboro' Chapel, January 23-28, 1843

    ( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)

  • Thirty short sermons : on various important subjects both doctrinal and practical

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • The philosophy of electrical psychology

    (The philosophy of electrical psychology 276 pages.)

  • Immortality Triumphant: The Existence of a God and Human Immortality
  • Spirit Manifestations Examined and Explained. Judge Edmonds Refuted; Or, An Exposition of the Involuntary Powers and Instincts of the Human Mind

Religion

Dods disbelieved in hell, denied Christ’s divine origin, and emphasized on the universal Fatherhood of God.

Views

Dods had vague ideas about the role of nerve centers in hypnotism, and several other general theories. The precise mechanisms, however, he failed to understand.

Nevertheless he supplemented his philosophical theories and his preaching by continual experiments, demonstrations, and practical lectures.

Connections

Dods was married three times. By his first wife (Mercy Hodgdon), he had three daughters and one son; by his second, one child, and none by the third.

His daughter, Jennie, was a good medium, and with her help Dods spread spiritualist practises and teachings.

Wife:

Mercy Hodgdon

Daughter:

Jennie