In 1815 a wandering Portuguese monk, the Abbe Faria, appeared in Paris. His experiences in India and the Far East had taught him to produce the somnambulistic trance simply by gazing steadily at the patient and then suddenly shouting, ‘Sleep!’ Despite many wonderful cures he was labelled a charlatan chiefly as the result of a hoax. An actor claimed to be ill and begged the Abbe to help him. He pretended to be hypnotized, and then spread the story about claiming to have made a fool of the Abbe. It says little for the state of the public mentality to record that such a stupid and malicious action succeeded in its purpose and destroyed public confidence in a very valuable method of healing.

Nevertheless, although the Abbe was discredited personally, he was the first to proclaim that the cause of the trance rested within the patient and was not due to any magnetic influence of the operator.

About the same time Dr. Alexander Bertrand explained the trance on psychological grounds and attributed it to applied suggestion.

Mesmerism made great strides in France, and many operations were performed under its influence. One of the most reliable mesmerists engaged in this work was the Baron du Potet. In 1837 he visited London and quickly enlisted the interest of Dr. John Elliotson by describing his cases of painless surgery under the influence of mesmerism. John Elliotson was one of the most brilliant men in the history of English medicine. Professor of Medicine at London University, President of the Royal Medical and Surgical Society and one of the Founders of University College Hospital, London, he introduced the stethoscope into England, together with the methods of examining the heart and lungs which are used to this day.

Quick to realize the importance of this new method of treatment, Elliotson began to experiment with ‘magnetic sleep’ in University College Hospital. He was soon able to prove its value in the treatment of nervous disorders as well as certain medical cases, while its use as an annaesthetic could not be disputed.

As had been the experience of others before him, Elliotson quickly aroused the envy and jealousy of the medical profession, as this extract from the Lancet of 1842 well shows:

‘The patient, alias the victim, alias the particeps criminis, is almost as bad as the operator; and even the man who reads about such performances, is a leper .

In 1838 the Council of the University passed a resolution forbidding the use of mesmerism in the hospital. Elliotson immediately resigned, saying to the Dean of the University, who tried to persuade him to give up mesmerism and so retain his position in the hospital: ‘The Institution (University) was established for the discovery and dissemination of truth. All other considerations are secondary. We should lead the public, not the public us. The sole question is whether the matter is the truth or not.’

Elliotson continued to use mesmerism in spite of much bitter opposition; and in 1843 he published Zoist, a quarterly journal which recorded case after case of successful mesmeric treatment.

In spite of the opposition to his mesmeric treatment, Elliotson was regarded as so outstanding a physician that the Royal College of Physicians invited him to deliver the Harveian oration in 1846. This he did, and chose to defend mesmerism, which called forth the following outburst in the Lancet of July 1846:

‘Does he himself (Dr. Elliotson) treat the harlotry which he dares to call science, with any respect?’

In 1846 Elliotson founded the Mesmeric Hospital In London, and similar institutions were established in other big cities such as Edinburgh and Dublin. From one of these, in Exeter, it was reported that Dr. Parker, a surgeon, had performed over 200 successful operations under mesmerism.

Meanwhile, in India, Dr. James Esdaile, a young Scottish surgeon, began to experiment with mesmerism after reading Elliotson’s work. In 1845 he succeeded with his first case; and in 1846 a Government Committee reported favourably on his work, placing him in charge of a special hospital in Calcutta.

Here Esdaile performed several thousand minor and nearly three hundred major operations under mesmerism. He was able to reduce the death rate from 50 per cent to 5 per cent by the use of mesmerism. Esdaile contributed regularly to Zoist, recording the results of many operations under mesmerism.

The Calcutta Medical College did its best to discredit him, and put about the story that his patients, who had undergone the most severe operations without pain, were a ‘set of hardened and determined impostors’.

Esdaile, however, had the last laugh as the local newspapers, which had at first condemned him, changed their opinions on seeing case after case of successful and painless surgery. They then turned indignantly on those members of the orthodox medical profession who had tried to mislead them.

Esdaile left India in 1851, returned to Scotland, and settled at Perth. Finding this too cold, he came south to Sydenham, where he died in 1859 at the age of fifty.

In England Esdaile received much the same treatment as Elliotson. The medical journals refused to print details of his painless operations under mesmerism, saying, of all things, that they were unpractical. Typical of the so-called scientific opinion of the time is this outburst of indignation from the Lancet: