James Braid (19 June 1795 – 25 March 1860) was a Scottish surgeon, natural philosopher, and "gentleman scientist". He was a significant innovator in the treatment of clubfoot, spinal curvature, knock-knees, bandy legs, and squint;Yeates, 2013; 2018a. a significant pioneer of hypnotism and hypnotherapy,Yeates, 2013; 2018b,c,d,e,f. and an important and influential pioneer in the adoption of both hypnotic anaesthesia and chemical anaesthesia.Yestes, 2018e,f.
He is regarded by some, such as William S. Kroger (2008, p. 3), as the "Father of Modern Hypnotism".Also see Robertson (2009), passim. However, in relation to the issue of there being significant connections between Braid's "hypnotism" and "modern hypnotism" (as it is practised), let alone "identity" between the two, André Muller Weitzenhoffer (2000) urges the utmost caution in making any such assumption: "It has been a basic assumption of modern (i.e., twentieth century) hypnotism that it is founded on the same phenomenology it historically evolved from. Such differences as exist between older versions of hypnotism and newer ones being reduced largely to a matter of interpretation of the facts. That there are common elements is not in question, but that there is full identity in questionable and basically untestable." – André Muller Weitzenhoffer (p. 3; emphasis added). Also, in relation to the clinical application of "hypnotism", Although Braid believed that hypnotic suggestion was a valuable remedy in functional nervous disorders, he did not regard it as a rival to other forms of treatment, nor wish in any way to separate its practice from that of medicine in general. He held that whoever talked of a "universal remedy" was either a fool or a knave: similar diseases often arose from opposite pathological conditions, and the treatment ought to be varied accordingly. – John Milne Bramwell (1910)Bramwell, Hypnotism and Treatment by Suggestion, (1910), p. 203
Early life Braid was born on 19 June 1795, the third son, and the seventh and youngest child, of James Braid (–1840s) and Anne Suttie (–?). He was born at Ryelaw House, in the Parish of Portmoak, Kinross, Scotland on 19 June 1795.As a consequence of the straightening and the re-routing of the course of the River Leven, Fife between 1826 and 1836the River Leven having been, for many years, the designated boundary between Kinross and Fifethe area known as "The Ryelaw" was officially transferred from the Parish of Portmoak, in the county of Kinross (into which Braid had been born), to the Parish of Kinglassie, in the county of Fife on 15 May 1891 (41 years after his death).
On 17 November 1813, at the age of 18, Braid married Margaret Mason (1792–1869), aged 21, the daughter of Robert Mason (?–1813) and Helen Mason, née Smith. They had two children, both of whom were born at Leadhills in Lanarkshire: Anne Daniel, née Braid (1820–1881), and James Braid (1822–1882).Yeates (208a), p. 17.
Education Braid was apprenticed to the Leith surgeons Thomas Anderson and Charles Anderson (i.e., both fatherThomas Anderson (1743–1813), M.D. (Edinburgh, 1773), F.R.C.S. (Edin.), surgeon, of Quality Street, Leith; also a Founding Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. One of his grandsons, also Thomas Anderson (1819–1874), was an eminent chemist. and sonCharles Anderson (1772–1855), M.D. (Edinburgh 1793), F.R.C.S. (Edin.), surgeon, of Quality Street, Leith; also, a Founding Member of the Wernerian Natural History Society; the father of Thomas Anderson (chemist).). As part of that apprenticeship, Braid also attended the University of Edinburgh from 1812 to 1814,The medical faculty of University of Edinburgh was also the alma mater of Thomas Brown (1778–1820), John Elliotson (1791–1868), James Esdaile (1808–1859), William Benjamin Carpenter (1813–1885), and John Milne Bramwell (1852–1925). where he was also influenced by Thomas Brown, M.D. (1778–1820),See: Yeates (2005). who held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh from 1808 to 1820.Yeates (2018a), pp. 21–22.
Braid obtained the diploma of the Licentiate of the Royal College of Surgeons of the City of Edinburgh, the Lic.R.C.S. (Edin), in 1815, which entitled him to refer to himself as a member of the college, rather than a fellow.Yeates (2013), pp. 36–48; Yeates (208a), p. 24.
Surgeon Braid was appointed surgeon to Lord Hopetoun's mines at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, in 1816. In 1825, he set up in private practice at Dumfries, where he also "encountered the exceptional surgeon, William Maxwell, MD (1760–1834)".Yeates (2018a), pp. 25–26.
One of his Dumfries' patients, Alexander Petty (1778–1864), a Scot, employed as a traveller for Scarr, Petty and Swain, a firm of Manchester tailors, invited Braid to move his practice to Manchester, England. Braid moved to Manchester in 1828,In Manchester he became friends with the English surgeon, Daniel Noble (1810–1885), who had trained at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and who lived and conducted his practise in Manchester. continuing to practise from there until his death in 1860."Sudden Death of Mr. James Braid, Surgeon, of Manchester", The Lancet, Vol.75, No. 1909, (Saturday, 31 March 1860), p. 335. "Though he was best known in the medical world for his theory and practice of hypnotism, he had also obtained wonderfully successful results by operation in cases of club foot and other deformities, which brought him patients from every part of the kingdom. Up to 1841 [viz., when he first encountered hypnotism] he had operated on 262 cases of talipes, 700 cases of strabismus, and 23 cases of spinal curvature." — John Milne Bramwell (1896).Bramwell, (1896), pp. 107.
Learned Society and Technical Institute Affiliations Braid was a member of a number of prestigious "learned societies" and technical/educational institutions: a member of both the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, a Corresponding Member of both the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh (in 1824),Hence the letters "C.M.W.S." in several of Braid's publications. and the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh (in 1854), a Member of the Manchester Athenæum, and the Honorary Curator of the museum of the Manchester Natural History Society.Fletcher, G., "James Braid of Manchester", British Medical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3590, (26 October 1929), pp. 776–77.
Mesmerism
Braid first observed the operation of animal magnetism, when he attended a public performance by the travelling French magnetic demonstrator Charles Lafontaine (1803–1892) at the Manchester Athenæum on 13 November 1841."Magnetic demonstrator" – Alan Gauld's term (Gauld, 1992 p. 204) – accurately describes Lafontaine. Whilst in the U.K. Lafontaine only demonstrated "magnetic" phenomena; he did not demonstrate the treatment of patients at any time (in public or private).
In Neurypnology (1843, pp. 34–35) he states that, prior to his encounter with Lafontaine, he had already been totally convinced by a four-part investigation of Animal Magnetism published in The London Medical Gazette (i.e., Anon, 1838) that there was no evidence of the existence of any magnetic agency for any such phenomena. The final article's last paragraph read: This, then, [in conclusion,] is our case. Every credible effect of magnetism has occurred, and every incredible is said to have occurred, in cases where no magnetic influence has been exerted, but in all which, excited imagination, irritation, or some powerful mental impression, has operated: where the mind has been alone acted on, magnetic effects have been produced without magnetic manipulations: where magnetic manipulations have been employed, unknown, and therefore without the assistance of the mind, no result has ever been produced. Why, then, imagine a new agent, which cannot act by itself, and which has never yet even seemed to produce a new phenomenon?Anon, The London Medical Gazette, Vol. 20, No. 538, (24 March 1838), p. 1037.
And, along with the strong impression made upon Braid by the Medical Gazette's article, there was also the more recent impressions made by Thomas Wakley's exposure of the comprehensive fraud of John Elliotson's subjects, the Okey sisters,See Clarke, 1874. [all of which] determined me to consider the whole as a system of collusion or illusion, or of excited imagination, sympathy, or imitation. I therefore abandoned the subject as unworthy of farther investigation, until I attended the conversazioni of Lafontaine, where I saw one fact, the inability of a patient to open his eyelids, which arrested my attention; I felt convinced it was not to be attributed to any of the causes referred to, and I therefore instituted experiments to determine the question; and exhibited the results to the public in a few days after. – (Braid, Neurypnology (1843), p. 35; emphasis added).
Braid always maintained that he had gone to Lafontaine's demonstration as an open-minded sceptic, eager to examine the presented evidence at first hand – that is, rather than "entirely [depending] on reading or hearsay evidence for his knowledge of it"Braid, J. (1845). Letter to the Editor [written on 9 June 1845]. The Critic: Journal of British and Foreign Literature and the Arts, 2(24), 144–46; at p. 144. – and, then, from that evidence, form a considered opinion of Lafontaine's work. He was neither a closed-minded cynic intent on destroying Lafontaine, nor a deluded and naïvely credulous believer seeking authorization of his already formed belief.Neurypnology (1843), p. 2.For an extended account of the interactions between Braid and Lafontaine, see Yeates (2013), pp. 103–308 passim; also Yeates (2018b), passim.
Braid was amongst the medical men who were invited onto the platform by Lafontaine. Braid examined the physical condition of Lafontaine's magnetised subjects (especially their eyes and their eyelids) and concluded that they were, indeed, in quite a different physical state. Braid always stressed the significance of attending Lafontaine's conversazione.Braid (1843), pp. 2–4.
Hypnotism "Modern hypnotism owes its name and its appearance in the realm of science to the investigations made by Braid. He is its true creator; he made it what it is; and above all, he gave emphasis to the experimental truth by means of which he proved that, when hypnotic phenomena are called into play, they are wholly independent of any supposed influence of the hypnotist upon the hypnotised, and that the hypnotised person simply reacts upon himself by reason of latent capacities in him which are artificially developed. Braid demonstrated that … hypnotism, acting upon a human subject as upon a fallow field, merely set in motion a string of silent faculties which only needed its assistance to reach their development. — Jules Bernard Luys (1828–1897)Luys, J., "The Latest Discoveries in Hypnotism", Fortnightly Review, Vol. 47, No. 282, (June 1890), pp. 896–921, at p. 896.
Lafontaine Braid attended two more of Lafontaine's demonstrations; and, by the third demonstration (on Saturday 20 November 1841), Braid was convinced of the veracity of some of Lafontaine's effects and phenomena (see Yeates, 2018b, pp. 56–63).
In particular, whilst Braid was entirely convinced that a transformation from, so to speak, condition1 to condition2, and back to condition1 had really taken place, he was also entirely convinced that no magnetic agency of any sort (as Lafontaine emphatically claimed) was responsible for the (veridical) events he had witnessed at first hand. He also rejected outright the assertion that the transformation in question had "proceeded from, or [had been] excited into action by another [person]" (Neurypnology, p. 32).
Braid's experimentum crucis