Neurypnology: or, The rationale of nervous sleep, considered in relation with animal magnetism; illustrated by numerous cases of its successful application in the relief and cure of disease.

London:: John Churchill; Edinburgh: Adam & Charles Black, 1843., 1843. 12mo. [iii]-xxii, 265, [1] pp. [Note: mispaginations: iv for vi, 233 for 238]. Errata; lacks half-title. Modern full calf, leather spine label. Penciled notes covering errata (faint). Fine. First edition. 'Braid introduced the term 'hypnosis' in his book Neurypnology (1843). He was mainly interested in the therapeutic possibilities of hypnosis and reported successful treatment of diseased states such as paralysis, rheumatism, and aphasia. He hoped that hypnosis could be used to cure various seemingly incurable 'nervous' diseases and also to alleviate the pain and anxiety of patients in surgery. / Braid's findings met with violent opposition at first, but they soon provided a major impetus to the development of the French school of neuropsychiatry.' - Encyclopaedia Britannica. / 'The first full-length scientific treatise on what is now known as hypnotism. When he published Neurypnology, Braid did not yet have a full understanding of the psychological processes involved in hypnosis, believing that hypnotic phenomena were produced by functional changes in the nervous, muscular, circulatory and respiratory systems. However he did recognize, as the Abbe Faria and Bertrand had before him, that hypnosis was a subjective phenomenon, dependent entirely on the state of mind of the hypnotized and not on any mystical fluid or occult magical power wielded by the hypnotizer. As Braid continued to investigate hypnotic phenomena, his ideas of what caused them underwent several radical changes, which are demonstrated in his later works. Braid's methods of hypnosis were published in France circa 1860, where they exerted an important influence on the work of Broca, Charcot, Liebeault, and Bernheim, whose teachings in turn influenced the work of Sigmund Freud.' - Haskell F. Norman 324. / James Braid, born in Scotland, was a Manchester physician who showed innovative treatments of clubfeet, curvature of the spine, bandy legs and strabismus. He is sometimes called the 'Father of modern hypnotism,' [Kroger, Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in Medicine, 2008, p.3] though hypnotism is much older than with his introducing the field to western thought. PROVENANCE: J. Wayne Cooper, M.D. [no markings]. REFERENCES: Bramwell, pp. 21-27; Crabtree, Animal Magnetism, Early Hypnotism, and Psychical Research, 1766-1925, 465; Fulton & Stanton, The Centennial of Surgical Anesthesia, I.17; Garrison and Morton 4993; Hunter & Macalpine, Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry, pp. 906-10.