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James Braid

Life Sciences

James Braid was a Scottish surgeon and scientist regarded as the father of modern hypnotism. After witnessing a demonstration by the mesmerist Charles Lafontaine in 1841, he began his own systematic investigation of the phenomenon, coining the term neuro-hypnotism and rejecting the mesmerists theory of animal magnetism in favor of a physiological and psychological explanation grounded in fixed attention and suggestion.

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