Once, in 1785, a mock funeral oration upon Mesmer took place, making his exhibitions and theories seem more ridiculous than ever. Thus he was tossed about between ridicule and praise until, as we have seen, his life was hardly one of harmony or joy.
Braid.
Although a number of men followed Mesmer, appropriating his method, enlarging upon it and changing it somewhat—such men as de Puysegur—it will be impossible in such a brief essay to tell of all of them. However, there is one man who rose up in the chaos of the times and again added new facts and theories to the science. This man was Braid, a surgeon of Manchester, England. Braid was born in the year 1795 on his father's estate in Fifeshire. He received his education at the University of Edinburgh, later being apprenticed to Dr. Chas. Anderson, of Leith. After graduating, he was appointed surgeon to the Hopetown mining works in Lanarkshire, later moving to Dumfries, where he engaged in practise with a Dr. Maxwell. An accident happening at that time brought to his town a Mr. Petty, who finally persuaded him to move to Manchester. It was here that he carefully worked on his new discovery and practised his cures. He died on March 25, 1860.
There is very little in Braid's life of especial interest, except his investigations in animal magnetism. His life seems to have been particularly free from the early struggles of a young practitioner. His interest in animal magnetism dates from the time he witnessed a séance by a M. Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist. He was extremely skeptical, but this one urged him to try experimenting himself.
In 1866 this M. Ch. Lafontaine, a traveling mesmerist, published his 'Memoirs of a Magnetizer.' If it had not been for this, the electro-biologists of America, under one named Grimes, might have claimed prior right to the discovery of hypnotism. M. Lafontaine thus describes the state of affairs at that time.
