68 HYPNOTISM AND ALLIED PHENOMENA. 



make us tolerant of other allegations the truth of which is 

 not yet established. 



About 1670 a gentleman named Valentine G-reatrex, the 

 " stroker " who had acquired repute as a healer of disease by 

 what was probably a combination of hypnotism and massage, 

 was actually commissioned by King Charles II. to exercise 

 his skill during the prevalence of certain epidemic diseases. 

 In 1772 Anthony Mesmer, M.D., of Berlin, began to investi- 

 gate the influence of magnetism, and is said to have effected 

 many cures. On propounding his theory of animal magnetism 

 he provoked a storm of envy and malice which overwhelmed 

 him, many of his patients, even after their transports of 

 gratitude had cooled, being so swayed by popular prejudice as 

 to aver that their cures must have been effected by chance. 

 He was ejected from Germany, and no University deigned to 

 give his claims fair trial, though they have come down to us 

 under his name as " Mesmerism." 



Surgeons of reputation, Eecamier in 1829, Cloquet, and 

 others, made occasional use of the method. In 1837 Dr. 

 Elliotson established in London a Mesmeric Hospital, where 

 he performed serious operations painlessly, but as he per- 

 sisted in proclaiming the superinduced phenomena of " clair- 

 voyance," transposition of the senses, etc., etc., he evoked a 

 storm of contumely which upset the balance of his mind, and 

 led to the termination of his existence by his own hand. 



At about the same time that Braid began his experiments 

 Dr. Esdaile, in India, in ignorance of those experiments, and 

 under very different conditions, arrived at similar results. 

 After five years-' practice he left a record in Calcutta of 261 

 painless operations of severe character. This direct continua- 

 tion of the practice, from Mesmer down to Charcot and 

 Liebault, ought to influence our tardy recognition of the 

 source to which honour is due. 



A view prevails among the modern differing from that of 

 the ancient professors of hypnotism. The former generally 

 consider the phenomena to be wholly subjective, whereas the 

 latter tended to the belief that they were objective. It is 

 noticeable, however, that the former are not ignorant of the 

 passage of some influence from the operator to the subject, 

 Liebault admitting that " there exists a relation" between 

 them, and Haidenheim when hypnotising looking at the 

 patient "very keenly." 



The belief that there is some emanation from the operator 

 resolves itself, in my mind, into a recognition of the tele- 

 pathic force of will power ; that there is a transference of 

 ideas from brain to brain. This transfer of force seems, like 

 the zymotic diseases, to require an incubation period, which 

 incubation period in this instance is characterised by somno- 

 lence or lethargy. 



