mes 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