riter who records this case continues: "This, however, was but a
transitory stage. It was soon recognized that a considerable time and a
good deal of preparation were necessary to induce the patients to sleep,
and medical men had recourse to a more rapid and certain method; that
is, chloroform. Thus the year 1860 saw the rise and fall of Braidism as
a means of surgical anaesthesia."

One of the most detailed cases of successful use of hypnotism as an
anaesthetic was presented to the Hypnotic Congress which met in 1889, by
Dr. Fort, professor of anatomy:

"On the 21st of October, 1887, a young Italian tradesman, aged twenty,
Jean M--. came to me and asked me to take off a wen he had on his
forehead, a little above the right eyebrow. The tumor was about the size
of a walnut.

"I was reluctant to make use of chloroform, although the patient wished
it, and I tried a short hypnotic experiment. Finding that my patient was
easily hypnotizable, I promised to extract the tumor in a painless
manner and without the use of chloroform.

"The next day I placed him in a chair and induced sleep, by a fixed
gaze, in less than a minute. Two Italian physicians, Drs. Triani and
Colombo who were present during the operation, declared that the subject
lost all sensibility and that his muscles retained all the different
positions in which they were put exactly as in the cataleptic state. The
patient saw nothing, felt nothing, and heard nothing, his brain
remaining in communication only with me.

"As soon as we had ascertained that the patient was completely under the
influence of the hypnotic slumber, I said to him: 'You will sleep for a
quarter of an hour,' knowing that the operation would not last longer
than that; and he remained seated and perfectly motionless.

"I made a transversal incision two and a half inches long and removed
the tumor, which I took out whole. I then pinched the blood vessels with
a pair of Dr. Pean's hemostatic pincers, washed the wound and applied a
dressing, without making a single ligature. The patient was still
sleeping. To maintain the dressing in proper position, I fastened a
bandage around his head. While going through the operation I said to the
patient, 'Lower your head, raise your head, turn to the right, to the
left,' etc., and he obeyed like an automaton. When everything was
finished, I said to him, 'Now, wake up.'

"He then awoke, declared that he had felt nothing and did not suffer,
and he went