HYPNOTISM, ITS HISTORY, NATURE AND USE. 595 



these ingredients into a bottle of fancy, digest for several days, and take forty 

 drops at about nine in the morning, or a few minutes before you receive a 

 portion of the magnetic Effluvia. They will make the effluvia have a sur- 

 prising effect, etc., etc. 



Once, in 1785, a mock funeral oration upon Mesmer took place, 

 making his exhibitions and theories seem more ridiculous than ever. 

 Thus he was tossed about between ridicule and praise until, as we 

 have seen, his life was hardly one of harmony or joy. 



Braid. 



Although a number of men followed Mesmer, appropriating his 

 method, enlarging upon it and changing it somewhat — such men as 

 de Puysegur — it will be impossible in such a brief essay to tell of all 

 of them. However, there is one man who rose up in the chaos of the 

 times and again added new facts and theories to the science. This 

 man was Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, England. Braid was born 

 in the year 1795 on his father's estate in Fifeshire. He received his 

 education at the University of Edinburgh, later being apprenticed 

 to Dr. Chas. Anderson, of Leith. After graduating, he was appointed 

 surgeon to the Hopetown mining works in Lanarkshire, later moving 

 to Dumfries, where he engaged in practise with a Dr. Maxwell. An 

 accident happening at that time brought to his town a Mr. Petty, who 

 finally persuaded him to move to Manchester. It was here that he 

 carefully worked on his new discovery and practised his cures. He 

 died on March 25, 1860. 



There is very little in Braid's life of especial interest, except his 

 'investigations in animal magnetism. His life seems to have been par- 

 ticularly free from the early struggles of a young practitioner. His 

 interest in animal magnetism dates from the time he witnessed a 

 seance by a M. Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist. He was extremely 

 skeptical, but this one urged him to try experimenting himself. 



In 1866 this M. Ch. Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist, published 

 his ' Memoirs of a Magnetizer.' If it had not been for this, the 

 electro-biologists of America, under one named Grimes, might have 

 claimed prior right to the discovery of hypnotism. M. Lafontaine 

 thus describes the state of affairs at that time. 



Having accomplished the cure of numerous deaf and blind persons, says 

 he with modest assurance, as also numerous epileptic and paralytic sufferers 

 at the hospital (this was in Birmingham), I repaired to Liverpool, but only 

 to meet with disappointment; few persons attended the seance; and on the 

 following day I proceeded to Manchester in which city my success was con- 

 spicuous. The newspapers reported my experiments at great length, and to 

 give some idea of the sensation I created, I may say that my stances returned 

 me a gross total of 30,000 frances. I put to sleep a number of persons who 

 were well-known residents of Manchester. I caused deaf mutes to hear, 

 operated a number of brilliant cures. After my departure, Dr. Braid, a 

 surgeon in Manchester, delivered a lecture in which he proposed to prove that 

 magnetism was non-existent. From this lecture Braidism, afterwards called 



