About 1840 the vaunted claims of the many clairvoyants were exposed
before the French Academy of Medicine, which passed a resolution
rejecting mesmerism altogether as unworthy of notice on the part of
scientific men. The theory of a mesmeric fluid, until then the only one
advanced, had evidently to be abandoned. Science with all its tests
could find no such cause of the results produced. But in 1842 an English
physician, Dr. James Braid, hit upon a more plausible theory. He
conjectured that the actions of the mesmeric subject could be explained
without a fluid by the suggestion of phantasms to him on the part of the
mesmerizer. Dr. Carpenter, then a great authority, defended his theory;
but the medical branch of the British Association disdained to consider
the matter. Dr. Braid thought the mesmeric trance was only a state of
somnambulism artificially brought about, and he coined the word
_hypnotism_ to indicate the artificial sleep. Other attempts to promote
the cause of hypnotism were made in the United States and other lands,
but no very definite or scientific results were reached until 1878, when
the celebrated Prof. Charcot and others made its nature and
possibilities the subject of a thorough study and abundant
experimentation at the Paris hospital of La Salpétrière and in other
places. At present it is admitted by distinguished medical scientists
that hypnotism is a reality, capable of being utilized for important
purposes. Many effects have been demonstrated to be produced by it as
real as any ordinary phenomena of nature. But on the explanation of
their causes there hangs still a cloud of obscurity.
The Paris School of Doctors attribute the effects to physical causes,
chief among which are diseases of the nerves. Those of Nancy trace the
phenomena to a psychical source, namely, to suggestion--that is, action
on the subject through his imagination excited by words, signs, or in
any other manner. This appears to be, in the main, the theory of
Dr. Braid vindicated by modern science. Probably enough, both schools
are right in their way, the suggestions not taking effect except where
nervous affections have prepared the way. The beneficial results claimed
for hypnotism by the scientific men who have made its study a specialty
are chiefly as follows: