Following on from the French committee’s finding, Dugald Stewart, an influential academic of the “Scottish School of Common Sense” encouraged physicians to salvage elements of Mesmerism by dropping any supernatural theory and replacing it with a new interpretation based on the “common sense” laws of physiology and psychology. It was felt that the physical effects of the principle of imagination were far more interesting than any doubtful role played by animal magnetism. Braid revised the theory and practice of Mesmerism and developed his own method of hypnotism as a more rational and “common sense” alternative. Braid was responsible for the term hypnotism which he used to explain the state of consciousness “into which the nervous system may be thrown by artificial contrivance” which he concluded was a form of sleep. He named this phenomenon after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep and master of dreams. The terms of “Hypnosis” and “Hypnotism” subsequently become widely adopted as part of all the major European languages.

Braid worked closely with his friend physiologist Professor William Benjamin Carpenter an early neuro-psychologist who introduced the “ideo-motor-reflex” theory of suggestion for muscular activity. Braid incorporated this into his own theory of hypnotism expanding it to cover the influence of the mind upon the body more generally and coined the term “psycho-physiology” to refer to the study of the interaction between the mind and the body.

Learn the most controversial and effective mind control techniques ever invented