James Braid (medic)

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James Braid

James Braid (born June 19, 1795 in St. Serf Inch, Kinross-shire , Scotland , † March 25, 1860 in Manchester ) was a Scottish surgeon and hypnosis researcher .

Life

James Braid was the third son and the seventh and youngest child of James Braid and his wife Anne Suttie.

Braid went to the surgeons Thomas and Charles Anderson in Leith in the apprenticeship and studied as part of the apprenticeship also from 1812 to 1814 at the University of Edinburgh , where he obtained a surgical diploma in 1815. He then found a position as a surgeon at the Leadhills mines . On November 17, 1813, he married Margaret Mason (1792–1869). During their time in Leadhills, the couple had four children, two of whom later reached adulthood.

Braid opened his own practice in Dumfries in 1825 , but moved to Manchester in 1828, where he would practice until his death. As a trained surgeon, he was a member of numerous scientific associations in the kingdom; He was considered a capacity for the treatment of malformations , especially clubfoot , and was also known as an eye surgeon.

Braid became aware of " animal magnetism " in November 1841 through a demonstration by the magnetizer Charles Lafontaine (1803-1892) . After further demonstrations by the magnetizer, Braid was convinced that it was a scientifically fathomable phenomenon. Contrary to what the magnetizers like Lafontaine propagated, Braid did not believe in a relationship to physical magnetism . In his investigations and experiments he succeeded in putting himself into a trance state and in reproducing Lafontaine's magnetization experiment without physical contact. In the same month, in November 1841, he postulated his own new theories about a psychophysiological connection and coined the term neurohypnology (neurohypnotism, based on the Greek word for sleep hypnos ), which he later shortened to neurypnology . Braid also defined his neuro-hypnotism as nervous sleep , which deviates significantly from natural sleep. The current term hypnosis was coined in France as early as 1820, and Braid also used this word (as hypnosis for somnambulistic sleep) for the sake of brevity. In the original of his book Neurypnology from 1843, contrary to other information, there is no mention of the god of sleep Hypnos .

Braid rejected the various occult explanations around the phenomenon, but was nevertheless equated in 1842 by the Calvinist preacher Hugh M'Neile with the "satanic", occult "sorcerers" like Lafontaine who practiced the "work of the devil". This led Braid to counter statements, skeptical reports to the scientific associations of which he was a member, as well as in 1843 to publish his book on the subject. In 1844 he gave a widely acclaimed public lecture in Manchester.

Around 1852/53, Braid also checked the experiments of Michael Faraday and William Benjamin Carpenter on the occult practice of moving a table (comparable to the back of glasses ), which was explained for a long time with ghosts, then with an ectical power of the seance participants. Braid, however, confirmed his colleagues' theories on the ideomotor principle .

At a time when the very first successful attempts were being made in medical anesthesia , hypnosis was one of the few methods of pain relief during operations. In Britain he was barely noticed after his death in 1860, in France , however, his ideas were taken up. Shortly before his death, Braid had sent his French colleague Étienne Eugène Azam a now-lost manuscript on hypnotism , which word he used as hypnotism (for the old mesmerism ).

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See also

literature

Web links

Commons : James Braid  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Markus Schwaiger: Braid, James. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 203.
  2. ↑ Sabine Kleine: The rapport between animal magnetism and hypnotism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 299-330; here: pp. 316-318.
  3. ↑ Sabine Kleine: The rapport between animal magnetism and hypnotism. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 13, 1995, pp. 299-330; here: p. 316.
personal data
SURNAME Braid, James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Scottish surgeon
DATE OF BIRTH June 19, 1795
PLACE OF BIRTH St. Serf Inch, Kinross-shire , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH March 25, 1860
Place of death Manchester