Psycho-therapeutics, or, Treatment by sleep and suggestion / by C. Lloyd Tuckey.

  • Tuckey, C. Lloyd (Charles Lloyd)
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Psycho-therapeutics, or, Treatment by sleep and suggestion / by C. Lloyd Tuckey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/100 (page 11)
    To James Braid, the Manchester surgeon, is due the credit of having seen the germs of truth which lay hidden and obscured in the writings of Mesmer and the animal magnetizers. He attempted to explain by physical laws the effects produced by mesmerisers,* and he ridiculed the notion of there being any such thing as a magnetic fluid or current. His disgust for the mysticism of mes- merism drove him, perhaps, too far towards the other extreme, and made him more rationalistic than the facts warranted him in being. Although he publicly demon- strated his system of healing—which he practised with much success—and wrote several works upon the subject, it appears to have died with him, and it remained for Dr. Liebault to arrive at the truth of psycho-therapeutics. I believe that all great discoveries are led up to by previous half-discoveries ; and it does not detract from Dr. Liebault's credit that he started with a large amount of evidence on the subject collected by earlier observers, any more than Darwin's claim to be the first evolutionist is weakened by his having drawn on the material supplied by Lyell, Hooker, and a multitude of others. Liebault's genius taught him to arrange and systematize the facts collected by his predecessors, and to find the true explana- tion of phenomena which they had misunderstood. And his patience and steadfast courage led him to persevere in his work, undeterred by opposition or neglect, until now * ' Neurypnology,' London, 1843; 'The Power of the Mind over the Body,' London, 1846.