Mesmerism in India: Its Practical Application in Surgery and Medicine

One of the greatest classics on hypnotism, first published in 1846. The author lists at the outset 73 painless surgical operations (including the removal of an 80-pound scrotal tumor) performed in the previous eight months while patients were in mesmeric trances, and cites eighteen cases of cures brought about by animal magnetic passes. He describes many of his surgical procedures, the null mortality rate he effected, and the modes in which Mesmeric fluid may be transmitted. Although this work, along with Elliotson's Numerous Cases of Surgical Operations Without Pain was briefly influential, experimentation of the kind Esdaile carried out was cut short by the discovery of an effective chemical anaesthesia the very year Mesmerism in India was published James Esdaile (1808-1859), a Scottish surgeon who was appointed Surgeon to Government of India, performed at least 291 painless operations in India using hypnotism. Aroused by his success, the Indian government soon established a mesmeric hospital for him. Esdaile performed a variety of surgical operations on Hindus, upon many of whom he appears successfully to have induced hypnotic anaesthesia. However, his similar attempts with Europeans were not so successful.