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Abstract
James Braid (1795-1860), natural philosopher, gentleman scientist, and inquisitive, sagacious, structured thinker, was an established and well-respected Manchester surgeon when, on 13 November 1841, he attended a conversazione on animal magnetism. This article provides details of his encounter with the magnetic demonstrator Charles Lafontaine, the immediate aftermath of that encounter, and Braid’s experimentum crucis, which not only refuted Lafontaine’s claims of magnetic agency, but also led to Braid’s discovery of neuro-hypnotism. It also describes Braid’s initial set of public lectures, within which he not only revealed and demonstrated the physical (rather than metaphysical) secrets of Lafontaine’s procedures, but also disseminated his own rudimentary discoveries and theoretical explanations in what were the initial, rudimentary stages of his establishment of hypnotism as an entirely autonomous domain of philosophical and medico-scientific inquiry.
