Pursuing special experiences that take them to the brink of permanent madness or death, men and women in every age have "returned" to heal and comfort their fellow human beings - and these shamans have fascinated students of society from Herodotus to Mircea Eliade. This study describes the first Western encounters with shamanic peoples and practices. The author views the 18th century as an age in which explorers were fascinating all Europe with tales of shamans who accomplished a "self-induced cure for a self-induced fit". Reports from what must have seemed a forbidden world of strange rites and moral licentiousness came from botanists, geographers, missionaries and other travellers of the period. These accounts created such a stir that they permeated cafe talk, journal articles and learned debates, giving rise to plays, encyclopaedia articles, art and operas about shamanism.