James Braid Names Hypnosis: The Birth of Modern Suggestion

Surgeon James Braid attended a demonstration of animal magnetism by Charles Lafontaine at the Manchester Athenaeum on November 13, 1841, and concluded that the trance states he witnessed were genuine but had nothing to do with magnetism. Braid was a Scottish surgeon practicing in Manchester, and he approached Lafontaine's traveling show with the skepticism of a trained medical professional. He attended three demonstrations over the course of a week, each time examining the subjects' physical condition more carefully. He observed changes in their eyes, muscle tone, and responsiveness that convinced him the trance state was real, but he rejected Lafontaine's claim that it was caused by any form of magnetic fluid or force passing between the operator and the subject. Braid conducted his own experiments, discovering that he could induce the same state by having subjects fixate their gaze on a bright object held slightly above their natural line of sight. The prolonged fixation produced fatigue of the eye muscles, which he believed triggered the trance through a purely neurological mechanism. He coined the term "neuro-hypnotism," later shortened to "hypnotism," derived from the Greek word for sleep, though he acknowledged that the hypnotic state was not actually sleep. His 1843 book Neurypnology laid out the scientific case for hypnosis as a neurological phenomenon, separating it from centuries of mystical associations with mesmerism, animal magnetism, and occult practice. His work gave hypnosis its name, its theoretical framework, and its first credible medical advocate. Surgeons began using hypnotic anesthesia before the introduction of ether, and the practice eventually found its way into the therapeutic toolkit of modern psychology and psychiatry.