Volume 2

Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte].

  • Harte, Richard.
Date:
1902-1903
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Hypnotism and the doctors / [Richard Harte]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    generally fatal that in most of the cases which he successfully treated no other surgeon would operate, and he never lost a patient in these cases.* In 1848 chloroform began to be employed in India, and was taken up warmly by the Faculty there, and in consequence the utility of mesmerism in surgical cases ceased to attract attention. Esdaile retired from the Company’s service in 1851, returned to Scotland, and settled near Perth, devoting himself to the recording of his mesmeric observations and experiences in India. He soon found Scotland too cold, after twenty years’ sojourn in India, and came South, dying in Sydenham in January, 1859, aged 50. Mr. Esdaile did little actual mesmerising after he left India, for he had retired from surgical practice, and he had not personally operated mesmerically for many years ; moreover, he thought that “ only the depressing influence of disease will be found to reduce Europeans to the impression- able condition of the nervous system so common to Eastern nations.” Esdaile thus graphically describes his first experience in mesmerism :— “At the time of making my first experiment, I had never seen anyone mesmerised, nor read a mesmeric book, and had only conversed with one person who had witnessed the mesmeric phenomena. My informant, being a trustworthy gentle- man, excited my curiosity, but as I could get no books on the subject, I determined to experiment for myself, leaving the when and the how undetermined. Accident decided this for me, and * The deaths in scrotal tumour cases were five per cent. “ But,” says Esdaile, “ it is an extraordinary circumstance that although 20 of these tumours were from 50 to 103 lbs., and many of the patients from 50 to 60 years of age, yet in no instance was death caused directly by the operation, but took place after many days or weeks.” The deaths in the 61 other cases, all “capital” operations, were four in number.