Braid, James
Name: James Braid
Achievements: Developed a scientific basis for hypnotism.
Born: c1795; Fifeshire, Scotland
Died: March 25, 1860; Manchester, England (Aged around 65)
Field & Discipline: Medicine; Hypnotism; Physician
Language: English
Father: Unknown
Mother: Unknown
Siblings: Unknown
Spouse: Unknown
Children: Unknown
Education: University of Edinburgh
Major Work:
"Neuropnology" (1843)
"The Power of the Mind over the Body" (pamphlet, 1846)
Life & Times:
Braid,the son of a Scottish landowner, gained his medical degree from Edinburgh University then completed his training as an assistant in Leith. His first shop was a surgery at the Earl of Hopetoun's coal-mining field in Lanarkshire.
He then went into general practice in Dumfries, where at one time, he had cause to treat a Mr Petty from the north of England, who had been in a stage-coach accident. Petty thought so highly of Braid that he persuaded him to set up a practice in Manchester, an important industrial centre in the north-west of England.
In 1841, he saw a demonstration by a French travelling mesmerist named Lafontaine. Braid was intrigued and began to investigate mesmerism, which at that time was explained in terms of animal magnetism, invisible fluids and other physical forces.
Braid thought it was all a trick perpetrated by the mesmerist and his 'patient', or that it was an illusion. He soon proved that it had nothing to do with magnetic influences and that it was a psychological phenomenon.
He carried out experiments and concluded that if subjects were subjected to repeated stimuli, their minds became fatigued, causing a suspension of the conscious mind. He called this phenomenon “hypnotism” and described two stages of its effect.
In the first stage, the subject was fully conscious, but limbs were passive and remained in a certain position until the subject was instructed otherwise. All senses were heightened except vision. In the second stage, the limbs were rigid, there was an insensibility to pain and the subject couldn’t remember anything on return to consciousness.
In 1842 Braid read a paper on the use of hypnotism in medicine at a Manchester meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The next year, he published his ideas on "Neurypnology", a word derived from neuro-hypnotism, which he used to emphasize that it had nothing to do with magnetism. He suggested that hypnotism could be used as a cure for bodily ailments.
There was great interest in the subject in the 1840s and '50s. Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, was intrigued by it, and, in 1846, the Scottish surgeon James Esdaile wrote of its use in major surgery in India. Hypnosis began to be associated with cranks and the medical establishment reacted against it.
Braid didn’t give up and continued to write and lecture to promote hypnotism. He firmly believed in its curative use and developed techniques for inducing hypnosis in his own patients. He also advocated the use of hypnotism for pain-free operations. The visual fixation method of induction is still sometimes referred to as Braidism.
Extra Connections: His work related to that of [work related to] Breuer*
A French doctor, [influenced] Liebault*, later used Braid's guidelines to cure a patient.
Assessment: Braid was one of the first to attempt a scientific explanation of mesmerism and he gave the phenomenon its modern name, hypnotism. His ideas on the usefulness of hypnotism to medicine were not taken up during his lifetime..
Oneliner: James Braid, early hypnotist
Bibliography:
- Hawkins, Peter and Heap, Michael, Eds., Hypnosis in Europe, Whurr Publishers Ltd., London, 1998.
- Winn, Ralph B, Dictionary of Hypnosis, Vision, London 1965.