The key to all these phenomena was first given by our countryman, Mr. James Braid, of Manchester, in 1840-50. His explanation is exceedingly well stated in his admirable little pamphlet entitled 'Magic, Witchcraft, Animal Magnetism, Hypnotism, and Electro-Biology,' of which the third edition was published by Churchill in 1852. It was Braid who first introduced the appropriate word, hypnotism, to describe these phenomena. He showed that the effects of the hypnotist are produced by setting in motion certain ideas in the mind of the individual, that the individual always hypnotises himself, and that hypnotism is a state of induced sleep produced by verbal suggestion or by artificial contrivance.

I may add that in repeating over and over again these experiments I have confirmed Braid's results, and have further proved that the will of the operator has nothing whatever to do with inducing sleep in the patient. Yon may, in operating after the varied methods of the mesmerist, the hypnotist, or the electro-biologist, will that the patient shall do whatever yon please - sleep or not sleep, but your will, unless it is expressed or indicated to the patient so as to afford him a mental suggestion on which he unconsciously acts, will count for nothing; he will fall into hypnotic sleep. His condition depends on what he thinks you wish and not on what you really wish; and if you set before him a glass of water or a penny-post letter, or put him in front of a tree or a candle, and tell him that you have mesmerised it, and order him to look at it and to be influenced by it, he will be influenced by it whether you have made any passes over it or not, whether you have magnetised it or not, and whether you wish it to influence him or not.

You have, in fact, very little to do with the matter as the operator, except in so far as you influence by your suggestion, and by the subject's conception of your will, his nervous system and his state of mind.