For several decades, Braid’s work became more influential abroad than in his own country, except for a handful of followers, most notably Dr. John Milne Bramwell. The eminent neurologist Dr. George Miller Beard took Braid’s theories to America. Meanwhile his works were translated into German by Wilhelm T. Preyer, Professor of Physiology at Jena University. The psychiatrist Albert Moll subsequently continued German research, publishing his Hypnotism in 1889. However, the study of hypnotism mainly became focused in France, after Braid’s research was presented before the French Academy of Sciences by the eminent neurologist Dr. Étienne Eugène Azam who also translated Braid’s last manuscript (On Hypnotism, 1860) into French. The French Academy of Science, who had previously examined Mesmerism in 1784, therefore subsequently examined the writings of Braid, shortly after his demise, at the request of Azam, Paul Broca, and others.

Azam’s enthusiasm for hypnotism influenced Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault, a country doctor whose enormously popular group hypnotherapy clinic was discovered by Hippolyte Bernheim who subsequently became himself an influential hypnotist. The study of hypnotism subsequently became centred upon a fierce rivalry and debate between Jean-Martin Charcot and Hippolyte Bernheim, the two most influential figures in late 19th century hypnotism.

An important argument developed between Charcot’s “Hysteria School”, centered on Charcot’s clinic at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital (thus, also known as the “Paris School” or the “Salpêtrière School”) and Bernheim’s “Suggestion School”, centred on Bernheim’s Nancy clinic (thus, also known as the “Nancy School” over the true nature of hypnosis. Charcot, influenced more by the Mesmerists, argued that hypnotism was an abnormal state of nervous functioning found only in certain hysterical women. He claimed that it was manifested in the form of a series of physical reactions which could be divided into distinct stages. Bernheim argued against Charcot that anyone could be hypnotised, that it was an extension of normal psychological functioning, and that its effects were variable being primarily due to suggestion. After several decades of debate, Bernheim’s view eventually came to dominate and Charcot’s theory of hypnosis is now seen as little more than a historical curiosity.

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