d the attention of a physician
by the name of James Braid. Through the aid rendered by Braid, animal
magnetism blossomed into a science. He directed the subject into its
proper field: he eschewed the occult and mysterious, and emphasized
observation and experiment. It was Braid who gave us the word
"hypnotism." At first a sceptic, he began experimenting and proved
that fixity of gaze had in some way such an influence on the nervous
system of the subject that he went off into a sleep. He therefore
opined that the transmission of a fluid by the operator had no part in
the matter.

He further showed that an assumed attitude changed the subject's
sentiments in harmony with the attitude, and that the degree of sleep
varied with different persons, and with the same person at different
times. He also noted the acuteness of the senses during hypnosis, and
that verbal suggestion would produce hallucinations, emotions,
paralysis, etc. Therapeutics was a subject in which he was naturally
interested, and his experiments on different diseases were frequent
and valuable. Braid made some mistakes, as was natural, but his
discoveries covered the field so well and his ideas were so sound
that too much credit cannot be ascribed to him. At first he thought
hypnotism (Braidism) was identical with animal magnetism, but later
made the mistake of considering it analogous, and the two flourished
side by side and independently.

Animal magnetism was first introduced into America in 1836 by Mr.
Charles Poyan, a French gentleman. A few years later a certain Dr.
Collyer lectured upon it in New England. New Orleans was, however, for
a long time its chief centre. In 1848 Grimes, working independently,
appears to have arrived at about the same conclusions as Braid. He
showed that most of the hypnotic phenomena could be produced in the
waking state in some subjects, by means of verbal suggestion. The
phenomena were known under the name of electro-biology. In 1850
Darling went to England and introduced electro-biology, but it was
soon identified with Braidism, and in 1853 Durand de Gros, who wrote
under the pseudonym of Philips, exhibited the phenomena of
electro-biology in several countries, but aroused little attention.

Azam of Bordeaux and Broca of Paris made some experiments following
Braid's method, and several times performed some painless operations
by this means. They were followed by numerous others in all European
countries and in Americ