INTRODUCTION.
There is no doubt that hypnotism is a very old subject,
though the name was not invented till 1850. In it was wrapped up the
"mysteries of Isis" in Egypt thousands of years ago, and probably it was
one of the weapons, if not the chief instrument of operation, of the magi
mentioned in the Bible and of the "wise men" of Babylon and Egypt. "Laying
on of hands" must have been a form of mesmerism, and Greek oracles of
Delphi and other places seem to have been delivered by priests or
priestesses who went into trances of self-induced hypnotism. It is
suspected that the fakirs of India who make trees grow from dry twigs in a
few minutes, or transform a rod into a serpent (as Aaron did in Bible
history), operate by some form of hypnotism. The people of the East are
much more subject to influences of this kind than Western peoples are, and
there can be no question that the religious orgies of heathendom were
merely a form of that hysteria which is so closely related to the modern
phenomenon of hypnotism. Though various scientific men spoke of magnetism,
and understood that there was a power of a peculiar kind which one man
could exercise over another, it was not until Frederick Anton Mesmer (a
doctor of Vienna) appeared in 1775 that the general public gave any
special attention to the subject. In the year mentioned, Mesmer sent out a
circular letter to various scientific societies or "Academies" as they are
called in Europe, stating his belief that "animal magnetism" existed, and
that through it one man could influence another. No attention was given
his letter, except by the Academy of Berlin, which sent him an unfavorable
reply.
In 1778 Mesmer was obliged for some unknown reason to
leave Vienna, and went to Paris, where he was fortunate in converting to
his ideas d'Eslon, the Comte d'Artois's physician, and one of the medical
professors at the Faculty of Medicine. His success was very great;
everybody was anxious to be magnetized, and the lucky Viennese doctor was
soon obliged to call in assistants. Deleuze, the librarian at the Jardin
des Plantes, who has been called the Hippocrates of magnetism, has left
the following account of Mesmer's experiments:
"In the middle of a large room stood an oak tub, four
or five feet in diameter and one foot deep. It was closed by a lid made in
two pieces, and encased in another tub or bucket. At the bottom of the tub
a number of bottles were laid in convergent rows, so that the neck of each
bottle turned towards the centre. Other bottles filled with magnetized
water tightly corked up were laid in divergent rows with their necks
turned outwards. Several rows were thus piled up, and the apparatus was
then pronounced to be at 'high pressure'. The tub was filled with water,
to which were sometimes added powdered glass and iron filings. There were
also some dry tubs, that is, prepared in the same manner, but without any
additional water. The lid was perforated to admit of the passage of
movable bent rods, which could be applied to the different parts of the
patient's body. A long rope was also fastened to a ring in the lid, and
this the patients placed loosely round their limbs. No disease offensive
to the sight was treated, such as sores, or deformities.
"A large number of patients were commonly treated at
one time. They drew near to each other, touching hands, arms, knees, or
feet. The handsomest, youngest, and most robust magnetizers held also an
iron rod with which they touched the dilatory or stubborn patients. The
rods and ropes had all undergone a 'preparation' and in a very short space
of time the patients felt the magnetic influence. The women, being the
most easily affected, were almost at once seized with fits of yawning and
stretching; their eyes closed, their legs gave way and they seemed to
suffocate. In vain did musical glasses and harmonicas resound, the piano
and voices re-echo; these supposed aids only seemed to increase the
patients' convulsive movements. Sardonic laughter, piteous moans and
torrents of tears burst forth on all sides. The bodies were thrown back in
spasmodic jerks, the respirations sounded like death rattles, the most
terrifying symptoms were exhibited. Then suddenly the actors of this
strange scene would frantically or rapturously rush towards each other,
either rejoicing and embracing or thrusting away their neighbors with
every appearance of horror.
"Another room was padded and presented another
spectacle. There women beat their heads against wadded walls or rolled on
the cushion-covered floor, in fits of suffocation. In the midst of this
panting, quivering throng, Mesmer, dressed in a lilac coat, moved about,
extending a magic wand toward the least suffering, halting in front of the
most violently excited and gazing steadily into their eyes, while he held
both their hands in his, bringing the middle fingers in immediate contact
to establish communication. At another moment he would, by a motion of
open hands and extended fingers, operate with the great current, crossing
and uncrossing his arms with wonderful rapidity to make the final passes."
Hysterical women and nervous young boys, many of them
from the highest ranks of Society, flocked around this wonderful wizard,
and incidentally he made a great deal of money. There is little doubt that
he started out as a genuine and sincere student of the scientific
character of the new power he had indeed discovered; there is also no
doubt that he ultimately became little more than a charlatan. There was,
of course, no virtue in his "prepared" rods, nor in his magnetic tubs. At
the same time the belief of the people that there was virtue in them was
one of the chief means by which he was able to induce hypnotism, as we
shall see later. Faith, imagination, and willingness to be hypnotized on
the part of the subject are all indispensable to entire success in the
practice of this strange art.
In 1779 Mesmer published a pamphlet entitled "Memoire
sur la decouverte du magnetisme animal", of which Doctor Cocke gives the
following summary (his chief claim was that he had discovered a principle
which would cure every disease):
"He sets forth his conclusions in twenty-seven
propositions, of which the substance is as follows:-- There is a
reciprocal action and reaction between the planets, the earth and animate
nature by means of a constant universal fluid, subject to mechanical laws
yet unknown. The animal body is directly affected by the insinuation of
this agent into the substance of the nerves. It causes in human bodies
properties analogous to those of the magnet, for which reason it is called
'Animal Magnetism'. This magnetism may be communicated to other bodies,
may be increased and reflected by mirrors, communicated, propagated, and
accumulated, by sound. It may be accumulated, concentrated, and
transported. The same rules apply to the opposite virtue. The magnet is
susceptible of magnetism and the opposite virtue. The magnet and
artificial electricity have, with respect to disease, properties common to
a host of other agents presented to us by nature, and if the use of these
has been attended by useful results, they are due to animal magnetism. By
the aid of magnetism, then, the physician enlightened as to the use of
medicine may render its action more perfect, and can provoke and direct
salutary crises so as to have them completely under his control."
The Faculty of Medicine investigated Mesmer's claims,
but reported unfavorably, and threatened d'Eslon with expulsion from the
society unless he gave Mesmer up. Nevertheless the government favored the
discoverer, and when the medical fraternity attacked him with such vigor
that he felt obliged to leave Paris, it offered him a pension of 20,000
francs if he would remain. He went away, but later came back at the
request of his pupils. In 1784 the government appointed two commissions to
investigate the claims that had been made. On one of these commissions was
Benjamin Franklin, then American Ambassador to France as well as the great
French scientist Lavoisier. The other was drawn from the Royal Academy of
Medicine, and included Laurent de Jussieu, the only man who declared in
favor of Mesmer.
There is no doubt that Mesmer had returned to Paris for
the purpose of making money, and these commissions were promoted in part
by persons desirous of driving him out. "It is interesting," says a French
writer, "to peruse the reports of these commissions: they read like a
debate on some obscure subject of which the future has partly revealed the
secret." Says another French writer (Courmelles): "They sought the fluid,
not by the study of the cures affected, which was considered too
complicated a task, but in the phases of mesmeric sleep. These were
considered indispensable and easily regulated by the experimentalist. When
submitted to close investigation, it was, however, found that they could
only be induced when the subjects knew they were being magnetized, and
that they differed according as they were conducted in public or in
private. In short--whether it be a coincidence or the truth--imagination
was considered the sole active agent. Whereupon d'Eslon remarked, 'If
imagination is the best cure, why should we not use the imagination as a
curative means?' Did he, who had so vaunted the existence of the fluid,
mean by this to deny its existence, or was it rather a satirical way of
saying. 'You choose to call it imagination; be it so. But after all, as it
cures, let us make the most of it'?
"The two commissions came to the conclusion that the
phenomena were due to imitation, and contact, that they were dangerous and
must be prohibited. Strange to relate, seventy years later, Arago
pronounced the same verdict!"
Daurent Jussieu was the only one who believed in
anything more than this. He saw a new and important truth, which he set
forth in a personal report upon withdrawing from the commission, which
showed itself so hostile to Mesmer and his pretensions.
Time and scientific progress have largely overthrown
Mesmer's theories of the fluid; yet Mesmer had made a discovery that was
in the course of a hundred years to develop into an important scientific
study. Says Vincent: "It seems ever the habit of the shallow scientist to
plume himself on the more accurate theories which have been provided f, by
the progress of knowledge and of science, and then, having been fed with a
limited historical pabulum, to turn and talk lightly, and with an air of
the most superior condescension, of the weakness and follies of those but
for whose patient labors our modern theories would probably be non-
existent." If it had not been for Mesmer and his "Animal Magnetism", we
would never have had "hypnotism" and all our learned societies for the
study of it.
Mesmer, though his pretensions were discredited, was
quickly followed by Puysegur, who drew all the world to Buzancy, near
Soissons, France. "Doctor Cloquet related that he saw there, patients no
longer the victims of hysterical fits, but enjoying a calm, peaceful,
restorative slumber. It may be said that from this moment really
efficacious and useful magnetism became known." Every one rushed once more
to be magnetized, and Puysegur had so many patients that to care for them
all he was obliged to magnetize a tree (as he said), which was touched by
hundreds who came to be cured, and was long known as "Puysegur's tree". As
a result of Puysegur's success, a number of societies were formed in
France for the study of the new phenomena.
In the meantime, the subject had attracted considerable
interest in Germany, and in 1812 Wolfart was sent to Mesmer at Frauenfeld
by the Prussian government to investigate Mesmerism. He became an
enthusiast, and introduced its practice into the hospital at Berlin.
In 1814 Deleuze published a book on the subject, and
Abbe Faria, who had come from India, demonstrated that there was no fluid,
but that the phenomena were subjective, or within the mind of the patient.
He first introduced what is now called the "method of suggestion" in
producing magnetism or hypnotism. In 1815 Mesmer died.
Experimentation continued, and in the 20's Foissac
persuaded the Academy of Medicine to appoint a commission to investigate
the subject. After five years they presented a report. This report gave a
good statement of the practical operation of magnetism, mentioning the
phenomena of somnambulism, anesthesia, loss of memory, and the various
other symptoms of the hypnotic state as we know it. It was thought that
magnetism had a right to be considered as a therapeutic agent, and that it
might be used by physicians, though others should not be allowed to
practice it. In 1837 another commission made a decidedly unfavorable
report.
Soon after this Burdin, a member of the Academy,
offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who would read the number of a
bank-note or the like with his eyes bandaged (under certain fixed
conditions), but it was never awarded, though many claimed it, and there
has been considerable evidence that persons in the hypnotic state have
(sometimes) remarkable clairvoyant powers.
Soon after this, magnetism fell into very low repute
throughout France and Germany, and scientific men became loath to have
their names connected with the study of it in any way. The study had not
yet been seriously taken up in England, and two physicians who gave some
attention to it suffered decidedly in professional reputation.
It is to an English physician, however, that we owe the
scientific character of modern hypnotism. Indeed he invented the name of
hypnotism, formed from the Greek word meaning 'sleep', and designating
'artificially produced sleep'. His name is James Braid, and so important
were the results of his study that hypnotism has sometimes been called "Braidism".
Doctor Courmelles gives the following interesting summary of Braid's
experiences:
"November, 1841, he witnessed a public experiment made
by Monsieur Lafontaine, a Swiss magnetizer. He thought the whole thing a
comedy; a week after, he attended a second exhibition, saw that the
patient could not open his eyes, and concluded that this was ascribable to
some physical cause. The fixity of gaze must, according to him, exhaust
the nerve centers of the eyes and their surroundings. He made a friend
look steadily at the neck of a bottle, and his own wife look at an
ornamentation on the top of a china sugar bowl: sleep was the consequence.
Here hypnotism had its origin, and the fact was established that sleep
could be induced by physical agents. This, it must be remembered, is the
essential difference between these two classes of phenomena (magnetism and
hypnotism): for magnetism supposes a direct action of the magnetizer on
the magnetized subject, an action which does not exist in hypnotism."
It may be stated that most English and American
operators fail to see any distinction between magnetism and hypnotism, and
suppose that the effect of passes, etc., as used by Mesmer, is in its way
as much physical as the method of producing hypnotism by concentrating the
gaze of the subject on a bright object, or the like.
Braid had discovered a new science--as far as the
theoretical view of it was concerned--for he showed that hypnotism is
largely, if not purely, mechanical and physical. He noted that during one
phase of hypnotism, known as catalepsy, the arms, limbs, etc., might be
placed in any position and would remain there; he also noted that a puff
of breath would usually awaken a subject, and that by talking to a subject
and telling him to do this or do that, even after he awakes from the
sleep, he can be made to do those things. Braid thought he might affect a
certain part of the brain during hypnotic sleep, and if he could find the
seat of the thieving disposition, or the like, he could cure the patient
of desire to commit crime, simply by suggestion, or command.
Braid's conclusions were, in brief, that there was no
fluid, or other exterior agent, but that hypnotism was due to a
physiological condition of the nerves. It was his belief that hypnotic
sleep was brought about by fatigue of the eyelids, or by other influences
wholly within the subject. In this he was supported by Carpenter, the
great physiologist; but neither Braid nor Carpenter could get the medical
organizations to give the matter any attention, even to investigate it. In
1848 an American named Grimes succeeded in obtaining all the phenomena of
hypnotism, and created a school of writers who made use of the word
"electro-biology."
In 1850 Braid's ideas were introduced into France, and
Dr. Azam, of Bordeaux, published an account of them in the "Archives de
Medicine." From this time on the subject was widely studied by scientific
men in France and Germany, and it was more slowly taken up in England. It
may be stated here that the French and other Latin races are much more
easily hypnotized than the northern races, Americans perhaps being least
subject to the hypnotic influence, and next to them the English. On the
other hand, the Orientals are influenced to a degree we can hardly
comprehend. |
