James Braid (surgeon)

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; a significant pioneer of hypnotism and hypnotherapy, and an important and influential pioneer in the adoption of both hypnotic anaesthesia and chemical anaesthesia. He is regarded by some, such as William S. Kroger (2008, p. 3), as the "Father of Modern Hypnotism". 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)

Early life Braid was born on 19 June 1795, the third son, and the seventh and youngest child, of James Braid (c. 1761–1840s) and Anne Suttie (c. 1761–?). He was born at Ryelaw House, in the Parish of Portmoak, Kinross, Scotland on 19 June 1795. 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).

Education Braid was apprenticed to the Leith surgeons Thomas Anderson and Charles Anderson (i.e., both father and son). As part of that apprenticeship, Braid also attended the University of Edinburgh from 1812 to 1814, where he was also influenced by Thomas Brown, M.D. (1778–1820), who held the chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh from 1808 to 1820.

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.

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)". 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, continuing to practise from there until his death in 1860.

"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).

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), 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.

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. 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? 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,

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