success, until ordered to
desist by the council of the college. Elliotson felt the insult keenly,
indignantly resigned his appointments, and never afterwards entered the
hospital he had done so much to establish. Despite the persistent and
virulent attacks of the medical press, he continued his mesmeric
researches up to the time of his death, sacrificing friends, income and
reputation to his beliefs.

The fame of mesmerism spread to India, where, in 1845, James Esdaile
(1808-1859), a surgeon in the East India Company, determined to
investigate the subject. He was in charge of the Native Hospital at
Hooghly, and successfully mesmerised a convict before a painful
operation. Encouraged by this, he persevered, and, at the end of a year,
reported 120 painless operations to the government. Investigations were
instituted, and Esdaile was placed in charge of a hospital at Calcutta,
for the express purpose of mesmeric practice; he continued to occupy
similar posts until he left India in 1851. He recorded 261 painless
capital operations and many thousand minor ones, and reduced the
mortality for the removal of the enormous tumours of elephantiasis from
50 to 5 per cent.

According to Elliotson and Esdaile, the phenomena of mesmerism were
entirely physical in origin. They were supposed to be due to the action
of a vital curative fluid, or peculiar physical force, which, under
certain circumstances, could be transmitted from one human being to
another. This was usually termed the "od," or "odylic," force; various
inanimate objects, such as metals, crystals and magnets, were supposed
to possess it, and to be capable of inducing and terminating the
mesmeric state, or of exciting or arresting its phenomena.

The name of James Braid (1795-1860) is familiar to all students of
hypnotism. Braid was a Scottish surgeon, practising in Manchester, where
he had already gained a high reputation as a skilful surgeon, when, in
1841, he first began to investigate mesmerism. He successfully
demonstrated that the phenomena were entirely subjective. He published
"Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep," in 1843, and invented
the terminology we now use. This was followed by other more or less
important works, of which I have been able to trace forty-one, but all
have been long out of print.

During the eighteen years Braid devoted to the study of hypnotism, his
views underwent many changes and modifications. In his first theory, he
expla