Braid’s scientific investigations of mesmerism convinced him that its effects did not depend on an outside force, but were natural phenomena arising from the subject’s heightened suggestibility. This 10-page pamphlet contains his first statement of these discoveries and contains the first use of the term “neuro-hypnotism”, which Braid coined to replace the unscientific “mesmerism” and “animal magnetism”.

Braid inaugurated modern hypnotism, the word itself being introduced by him. His theories were adopted by Broca, Charcot, Liébeault, and Bernheim; thus he founded the French School. New edition, edited with an introduction biographical and bibliographical embodying the author's later views and further evidence on the subject by Arthur Edward Waite  (London: George Redway, 1899).

A translation into German by Preyer of a previously unpublished work on the history of hypnosis by James Braid.