The Pendulum
More studies and experiments in mind control followed through the years, but it was a research launched in 1842 that was considered the turning point in the study of Mesmers ideas. Scottish surgeon James Braid was one of the first scientists to attribute the process of going under a trance to a physiological process. He believed that the state of trance was not due to the magnetic power of the hypnotist; but through hard, rapt attention on a striking, moving object over time, as in that iconic clock necklace. Protracted ocular fixation, Braid believed, will make the brain tired and will cause the subject to be under what he called nervous sleep. Thus Braid coined the term hypnotism and hypnosis, based on the Greek word of sleep.
Braid, with his contemporaries such as Ambroise-Auguste Liebeault, Hippolyte Bernheim and J.M. Charcot, later focused more on the impact of psychological motivation in hypnosis rather that their early concept of fatigue and nervous sleep. They were also the first ones to tread upon medical hypnosis, wherein they used hypnotism to treat different psychological and physical conditions.
