Hypnotism: Its History, Practice and Theory

 

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in St. Petersburg, showed the slight value of hypnotism for surgery. In consequence of this it found no acceptance in medicine at that time. The experiments of Lasegue in 1865, when he obtained cataleptic phenomena by closing the eyes, aroused no particular interest. In the following years we only find here and there, especially in some English scientific works, brief notices of hypnotism or mesmerism, as in Thomas Watson's Lectures (1875), in Tanner's Practice of Medicine (1875), and in Quain's Dictionary of Medicine, in which Bastian wrote on. Hypnosis, and urged the need for further investigation (Felkin).

Meanwhile, Liebeault, who later removed to Nancy, had made himself familiar with the phenomena of hypnotism and animal magnetism. The last he endeavoured to refute, and he became the real founder of the therapeutics of suggestion. His book published in 1866 (Du Sommeil, etc.), which is even to-day very well worth reading, contains his ideas; it remained little known, and the author was much laughed at.

Suggestion had undoubtedly been applied before Liebeault's time, in the waking as well as in the hypnotic condition. We find in the literature of mesmerism many indications that the followers of animal magnetism frequently regarded speech as the bearer of magnetism; for example, Ennemoser and Szapary. As Bramwell very properly reminds us, there is frequent reference in Braid's writings to the great influence of verbal suggestion. It was, however, Liebeault who first utilized suggestion methodically. It must not be forgotten also that it was through Liebeault, as we shall see, that Bernheim was induced to turn to the study of hypnotic suggestion, while through Bernheim the attention of many other investigators was called to hypnosis. The later historical development of hypnosis begins with Liebeault. That some earlier writers, however, knew much that he more fully worked out cannot be doubted.

Independently of Liebeault, Charles Richet came forward in Paris in 1875 to contend for the real existence of hypnosis, which he called "Somnambulisme provoque." In the year 1878 Charcot began his demonstrations, in which he directed attention to the physical states of hystero-epileptics during hypnosis ; in 1881 Paul Richer published, in his book on La grande Hysterie, many experiments performed on the lines of Charcot. Among the pupils of Charcot I may name, in addition, Binet, Fere, Gilles de la Tourette, Babinski, Barth, Bourneville, Regnard.
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