| A Brief History |
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A brief history of hypnosis and hypnotists...All primitive cultures, both ancient and modern, have been aware of hypnosis. Priests and which doctors have made it a stock in trade since early history and human race. There were "sleep temples" in ancient Greece and Egypt where patients were hypnotised or were talked to during their sleep and given curative suggestions. The Druids and the Celtic priesthood were supposed to have been experts in its use. In primitive cultures trance induction has always been by means of rhythm: drums, dancing, chanting, etc.  One of the most outstanding physicians of early history was Hippocrates (416-377 BC), who as well as being the author of numerous medical works, travelled through Greece practising and teaching the art of healing. He maintained that our feelings or emotions all derived from the brain. Here was the seat of disease and the centre controlled the entire body.Some 500 years later, and second only to Hippocrates, was Galen (AD 129 - 199). He elaborated on Hippocrates' work and discussed the influence of the body and mind upon each other. He conceived that the notion of some heavenly or ethereal fluid as a bridge between the two so that physical ailments could derive from mental problems and physical organic illness could cause mental disturbance, through the flow of this fluid. So gradually unfolded the idea of emotional illness and the hope that if this ethereal fluid could be harnessed then man could indeed influence the course of disease. The concept of such a fluid and the idea of a bridge between the body and mind continued to occupy the thoughts of scientists and philosophers. It was additionally held that this fluid accounted for the transmission of light, heat and impulses of the nervous system as well as of magnetism. Then in the 16th century, the Swiss physician named Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, otherwise known as Paracelsus, revolutionised most of the theories of medicine held at the time. Pursuing the ideas of the ancient Greeks, he developed the notion that the heavenly bodies could affect humans and affect the course of disease. A hundred years later, a German scholar, Athanasius Kirchir, proposed that some natural power that he called animal magnetism was also involved. Thegreat British philosopher and scientist, Sir Isaac Newton, also believed in animal magnetism. The inter-relationship between body and mind was not a preoccupation limited to philosophers and physicians. Although during the Middle Ages the use of suggestion has a healing art was regarded as sacrilegious in Christian civilisation, many "miracle" cures were affected by the clergy, through use of sacred relics, statues or shrines endowed with the special powers of healing. Hypnosis continued to be explored and developed by many people. The following list, are those people who helped to establish the credibility of hypnosis as we know it today.
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