Lafontaine created a sensation by mesmerizing a lion in the London Zoological Gardens; and he often repeated this feat in other cities. This great magnetizer had travelled widely in Europe, giving demonstrations and performing many wonderful cures.

In Italy he met considerable opposition from the Church and was arrested. King Ferdinand gave him permission to stay in Naples on the condition that ‘he made no more blind people to see nor deaf ones to hear’. This extraordinary condition was imposed at the request of the Church, the priests declaring that Lafontaine’s cures were ‘blasphemous imitations of the miracles of Christ’

Pope Pius IX, however, was more broadminded, and after receiving Lafontaine in audience, dismissed him with these words:

‘Well, Monsieur Lafontaine, let us wish and hope that, for the good of humanity, magnetism may soon be generally employed.’

In 1841 Dr. Braid attended a public performance by Lafontaine at Manchester, with the amiable intention of exposing the mesmerist as a charlatan and a humbug. Like many another sceptic, he was astounded to find that the phenomena of the trance were real.

Being a man of intelligence, he did not, as so many others had done, resort to a campaign of vilification and falsehood to cover up his ignorance, but set to work to find a scientific reason for the trance.

Observing that Lafontaine caused his subject to gaze fixedly, Braid decided that the ‘sleep’ resulted from fatigue of the eyes. He therefore experimented with his wife, a friend, and a servant, by causing them to gaze steadily at an object, and found that he was able to produce a trance-like state in every case.

Braid coined the word ‘hypnotism’ to describe the art and science of inducing ‘hypnosis’ which was the name he gave to the trance state.

At first Braid, like many others, thought hypnosis was merely a form of sleep. He soon came to realize that hypnosis was not sleep and tried to change the name, but the word ‘hypnotism’ has persisted to this day.

Later he also abandoned fixed gazing and found that he could induce the state by verbal suggestion alone. In 1847 he further found that all the major phenomena of hypnotism such as catalepsy, anaesthesia and amnesia could be induced without sleep.

Again Braid received much the same treatment from the orthodox medical profession as other pioneers in this subject, and in 1842 his offer to read a paper and give a demonstration before the British Medical Association was contemptuously rejected. In 1843 Braid published a book called Neurypnology, or the Rationale ol Nervous Sleep, in which he described his method and the cure of cases such as rheumatism, epilepsy, paralysis and neuralgia.

Many surgeons reported successful painless operations under hypnotism; but with the discovery of chloroform, hypnotic annaesthesia was soon forgotten, and the less spectacular therapeutic possibilities were ignored - at least, in England.

Fortunately, a copy of Braid’s book fell into the hands of Liebeault, a simple French country doctor who practised at Nancy. To Braid’s method of fixed gazing, Liebeault added verbal suggestion. For twenty years he practised hypnotism, accepting no payment for this form of treatment. When he finally published a book on the subject, Du Sommeil, he sold exactly one copy!

As usual, Liebeault was regarded as a fool or a knave by his fellow doctors; and one of them, Professor Bernheim, wrote an article to prove that Liedbeault was an arch charlatan.

Bernheim’s indignation was further aroused when he heard that one of his patients, whom he had treated unsuccessfully for sciatica, had been quickly cured by Liebeault.

He thereupon decided to visit Liebeault with the amiable intention of exposing him as a quack. Bernheim, however, was convinced after one visit of the genuineness of Liebeault’s cures, and the two became great friends. So this famous Professor of Medicine was not too proud to adopt the simple country doctor’s form of treatment, and he was soon able to show more than 10,000 cases treated successfully by hypnotism.

In 1884 he published De la Suggestion, giving Liebeault full credit, while in 1886 he produced Suggestive Therapeutics, and hypnotism became firmly established as the most important form of psycho-therapeutic treatment.

Meanwhile, Charcot, the great neurologist, working independently in Paris at his Salpetriere Clinic, attempted to put hypnotism on a ‘scientific’ basis. As a result of never hypnotizing anybody himself and working only with three grossly hysterical women, he came to the highly unscientific opinion that only hysterical subjects could be hypnotized, and that the magnetic influence was a real one! In other words, Charcot went right back to Mesmer and merely disguised the latter’s theories in pseudoscientific language.

Charcot made the colossal mistake of believing the subject to be deaf in the first two stages of hypnosis. As a result, his experiments were of no value, as his subjects merely carried out suggestions which they received from him.

Again, he believed that there were three distinct stages of hypnotism. The first one, lethargy, could be induced simply by closing the eyes. The second, catalepsy, resulted when the eyes were opened. The third, somnambulism, could be produced by rubbing the top of the subject’s head. An example of the way Charcot experimented will show how an otherwise clever and able man made the most stupid mistakes.

In front of the hypnotized subject, whom he erroneously believed to be deaf, Charcot would state that, on applying a magnet to a certain limb, it would become paralysed. Naturally this would occur; but Bernheim was able to show that all of Charcot’s experiments were completely valueless, and that all the results attributed to the magnet could be brought about by suggestion.

In spite of this, Binet, who later helped to devise the ‘intelligence test’, and Fere published their book Animal Magnetism in 1888. Being pupils of Charcot, they endeavoured to support his obviously fallacious theories, but merely succeeded in producing a mass of pseudo-scientific nonsense.

Meanwhile, the vogue for hypnotic treatment as used by Bernheim and Liebeault spread all over Europe. Men like Forel in Switzerland, Bramwell and Lloyd Tuckey in England, Wetter-strand in Sweden, Heidenhain in Germany with Morton Prince and McDougall in America, all helped to establish the value of hypnotism as a psycho-therapeutic measure.

There now appeared a man who was destined to deal hypnotism its greatest blow. Like Mesmer, Sigmund Freud practised as a medical man in Vienna, and in 1884 he heard from Dr. Breuer, a friend, how the latter had cured a case of hysteria by hypnosis. Freud was interested; and in 1885 he went to Paris, where he observed Charcot’s experiments in hypnosis. Back in Vienna he worked with Breuer, using hypnosis in the so-called ‘cathartic method’. That is, instead of making curative suggesdons, the patient was encouraged to talk, and in recovering lost memories for painful events, patients discharged their emotions.

Freud was not satisfied with his hypnotic ability, and visited Nancy in 1889, where he studied hypnotism under Bernheim and Liebeault.

When he discovered that he could not deeply hypnotize everybody - deep hypnosis being necessary for his method - Freud resolved to give up hypnotism.

This was about as sensible as throwing away a bottle of medicine because one dose did not cure.

Freud had noticed that, by persistent questioning in the waking state, Bernheim could get previously hypnotized patients to remember things they had apparently forgotten.

He therefore decided that by encouraging patients to talk exhaustively about themselves and their thoughts, painful and repressed memories would be eventually brought to the surface and so a cure be effected.

The time and expense involved in so tedious a method meant little to Freud. In fact, he recommended treatment for one hour a day, six days a week, for perhaps six years!

As Freud’s influence grew - and his method was bound to become popular as his theories placed considerable emphasis on sex - phychiatrists abandoned hypnotism more and more. It became popular with psychiatrists because it was obviously easier and more lucrative to listen to some wealthy patient retailing the story of her life for one hour a day for six days a week for six years - or more! - than to hypnotize that patient and remove her worries with a few treatments.

Periodically, as during and after the great wars, when a quick method has been necessary to cure nervous complaints, there has been a revival of hypnotism, and recently psychiatrists have been using it in an attempt to shorten the time necessary for psychoanalysis.

Freud himself, although generally opposed to hypnotism, was forced to admit that a return to hypnotism would be necessary as a short cut if psycho-therapy was ever to be made widely available to the public instead of being restricted to a few wealthy patients.

In the past, waves of enthusiasm for hypnotism have always been followed by periods of profound disillusionment. This was due to two facts: Inability to substantiate fantastic claims for hypnotism as a panacea for all human ills by enthusiastic but

medically ignorant amateurs invariably brought unwarranted discredit on the subject. On the other hand, serious scientific workers and properly qualified medical men usually worked alone, so that their efforts were easily swamped by mass ignorance and superstition.

In recent years, however, the team spirit has prevailed, and hypnotherapy has developed on a scientific basis. In 1948 the ‘British Society of Medical Hypnotists’ was founded, and it soon included the leading authorities on hypnosis from practically every country in the civilized world. A quarterly publication, The British Journal of Medical Hypnotism, appeared in 1949, and has been officially recognized by the World Health Organization in its publication, World Medical Periodicals.

Following the British example, the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis was formed in New York, U.S.A., in 1949, and its first quarterly journal, The Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, was published in 1953.

These two internationally recognized scientific societies with their journals will ensure that this time hypnotherapy will assume its rightful place in Medicine, and that mankind will never again be robbed of the priceless benefits of hypnotherapy by the ignorant and superstitious.