James Braid used to throw his patients into a kind of sleep or trance by making them fix their eyes and attention on a bright object - generally his lancet-case - held a few inches above the eyes He found this caused fatigue of sight and abstraction of mind, which in nearly all cases induced the condition he termed hypnotism.

He practised his system successfully for many years at Manchester, and wrote several books in which he fully explained it.

But it seems to have died with him, and it is only now that suggestion with hypnotism has come so prominently before the profession that his works begin to be largely read. The most important one,'Neurypnology' (London, 1852), has been translated into French by M. Jules Simon, - an almost unique honour, I imagine, for a foreign medical author nearly thirty years after his death.*

Braid found hypnotism increased the heart's action to such an extent that he warned medical men against using it when heart disease was suspected. He found it impossible to get children to keep their eyes fixed on his lancet-case for the necessary four or five minutes, and therefore regarded them as insusceptible. We have seen, on the other hand, that suggestion finds its best subjects in children between the ages of three and fourteen, and in heart disease it is one of the most successful means of calming and reducing irregular heart action, Braid went near to discovering the truth which Liebeault, a few years afterwards, thought out, and introduced to the world.