Hypnotism : its history, practice and theory / by J. Milne Bramwell.

  • Bramwell, J. Milne (John Milne), 1852-
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Hypnotism : its history, practice and theory / by J. Milne Bramwell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    statement appeared: “ Of course the parties concerned in the infamous publication (the Zoist) are in a state of perpetual mortification at their fallen and degraded position, and therefore they bite and rail; the leper [sic] must be taken with his spots.” The subjects of the various surgical operations were uni- versally regarded either as impostors or as persons insensible to pain. In Nottinghamshire, in 1842, Mr. Ward, surgeon, amputated a thigh during mesmeric trance; the patient lay perfectly calm during the whole operation, and not a muscle was seen to twitch. The case, reported to the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, was badly received; and it was even asserted that the patient had been trained not to express pain. Dr. Marshall Hall suggested that the man was an impostor, because he had been absolutely quiet during the operation; if he had not been simulating insensibility, he would have had reflex movements in the other leg. Dr. Copland proposed that no account of such a paper having been read before the Society should be entered in its minutes. He asserted that “ if the history of the man experiencing no agony during the operation were true, the fact was unworthy of their consideration, because pain was a wise provision of nature, and patients ought to suffer pain while their surgeons were operating ; they were all the better for it and recovered better.” Eight years afterwards, Dr. Marshall Hall publicly stated at a meeting of the Society that the patient had confessed that he had suffered during the opera- tion. The doctor was promptly challenged to give his authority, and replied that he had received the information from a personal acquaintance, who, in his turn, had received it from a third party, but that he was not permitted to divulge their names, and would not give any further information on the subject. The man was still living, and signed a solemn declaration to the effect that the operation had been absolutely painless. Dr. Ash- burner attended the next meeting, and asked permission to read this statement in opposition to Dr. Marshall Hall’s, but the Society would not hear him. Elliotson opposed and constantly attacked spiritualism, but, on the other hand, shared the mesmeric errors of his day; he believed in clairvoyance, phrenology, and odylic force, and trans- lated Burq’s Metallo- Therapia. Elliotson’s fallacies, especially as to clairvoyance, were eagerly