The History Of Hypnosis

By Author: Milos Pesic
Total Articles: 28
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"Artificially enhanced state of suggestibility resembling sleep", or widely known as hypnosis, has been in use for many centuries. However, In days of old, hardly anyone understood it or appreciated its complex nature. Its power was frequently attributed to magic and darkness. We now know that ancient fakirs and magicians practiced various types of hypnosis, especially among the Hindus. During the reign of Genghis Khan, magicians practiced group suggestion and hypnosis so as to elicit visual and auditory hallucinations, of which Marco Polo gave several vahue accounts.

It was Mesmer (1734 - 1815) who introduced the first practice of suggestion as a clinical measure, though it was yet to be recognized as such. Because it was him who developed the art,the term mesmerism was adopted as a descriptive word. Mesmer's practice of suggestion therapy consisted of the use of the natural qualities of animal magnetism which could be induced to manifest themselves in people, trees, or any chosen object.

John Elliotson was the next big figure in hypnotism. He was born in 1791, studied medicine at Edinburgh, and in 1817 was appointed ...
... assistant physician at St. Thomas Hospital, where he stirred much antagonism due to his radical and liberal attitudes toward the practice of medicine. In 1837 he was appointed professor of the practice of medicine at the University College in recognition of his outstanding clinical ability. At about the same time he began his researches in hypnosis, or mesmerism as it was called at theat time. He practiced it on patients, received much condemnation for this.

Elliotson was succeeded as the champion of mesmerism by James Esdaille, who began his work in India, stimulated in the study of hypnotism by reading Elliotson's reports. Being under government protection he succeeded in the application of hypnosis to clinical cases, and was the main figure in the founding of a hospital for this express purpose. Before he left he had utilized it in thousands of minor and in about 300 major operations. Records of these cases are still available to the scientifically curious. Despite the protection of the government, he was subjected to much persecution by his fellow-practitioners.

James Braid followed Esdaille. He was an English surgeon born in 1795. He did not take up the study of hypnotism until 1841. At that time he witnessed a hypnosis trance and was clear in his denunciation of the entire scene as a fraud. By chance he was induced to make a medical examination of the subject, following which he got interested in the phenomenon and devoted himself to a detailed investigation of the entire manifestation. It was owing to the researches of Braid that hypnosis got its scientific foundation, and his coining and application of the terms hypnotism and hypnosis to the phenomenon instead of the misnomer of mesmerism facilitated its acceptance by the medical profession. In the course of his research, Braid came to the conclusion that hypnosis was a matter of suggestion. He made a detailed study of the technique of hypnosis and was a prolific writer who left extensive treatises which are surprisingly modern in their conceptions.