Mr. Braid’s Lecture on Animal Magnetism

Excerpt from The Manchester Courier, Saturday, December 11th 1841

James Braid began to experiment with animal magnetism in November 1841 and quickly developed a rational explanation for the phenomena.  A few weeks later, in the third of a series of public lectures on the subject, he called a group of fourteen subjects to the stage among whom was a gentleman named Mr. Cope.  After expressing aloud some initial scepticism, much to the amusement of the audience, he responded just like the other subjects on the stage and even announced his complete belief in the phenomena.  At his own request, several men pricked Mr. Cope in the hands and forehead with sharp pins to which he appeared insensitive.  Braid called upon Mr. Cope to describe his experience, which the local newspaper reported as follows,

“Ladies and gentleman, I can much better endure the applause with which you have now welcomed me forward, than I could your noise and merriment whilst in a state of somnolency [i.e., hypnosis].  I could not then hear the slightest noise without pain, and I make this remark in the hope that it will induce you to observe more silence during other experiments.  The sensation I felt from that noise, arising, I suppose, from an increased and stimulated sense of hearing, was so dreadful that I felt as though my whole frame would be seriously convulsed. 

When I first went down to submit myself voluntarily to Mr. Braid’s directions I did not at first surrender my mind, and was sensible to all that was going on; which shows the necessity, as he says, of abstracting the attention and mind from everything.  I recollect afterwards, that just as I was becoming sleepy Mr. Braid touched my arm with his glass baton, and that partly roused me, but I soon afterwards was unable to resist the influence, and closed my eyes.  I was then seized with a powerful wish to be at rest, and undisturbed. 

After a few minutes I became more sensible to light, though my eyelids were closed, I could not, however, see anything before me, though it is possible I might afterwards, as the sense of light seemed to become gradually more intense. 

When the gentlemen tested me with pins I did not feel pain; the sensation was as though some thick, blunt instrument had been thrust against my hands and forehead. 

As to the state of rigidity in which my arms were, that is attended with a peculiar sensation.  If I had been asked if I could move my arms I think I should have said “Yes.”  The rigidity seemed to arise more from an absence of will to move my arms than anything else.  I was asked once to move my arms, but I did not feel as though I could not; I felt as though I could not rouse my will to try to do it.  During the whole time I felt no unpleasantness, except from the noise – rather the contrary.”