This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilton.

Listen, I'm in a phase where I just want to follow various threads and paths down where they take me on different episode researches.

And then I find something else in that and it kind of relates to it and I want to come back to it.

And often I try to space those out, but not right now. I'm doing it. Also, this is another

instance where we're talking about a person who is interesting and important in the development

of a thing and not a jerk, which I just need right now, apparently. This is sort of a prequel

to our recent episode on Emil Kuwe and Kuayism, because we are going to talk about

hypnosis and how that actually became a thing separate from mesmerism. In 1890, one of James

Braids' most significant texts was reprinted. That's 56 years after its

original publication. And it includes a somewhat, depending on your point of view, insulting note

in the introduction, which is written by Arthur Edward Waite. It reads, quote, The materials for the biography of James Braid are so meager that a paragraph of modest

dimensions will be found to exhaust them, nor is the reason far to seek. His life would seem to have

been of an unchecked and even character. It was free from early struggles, for it was entered under favorable

circumstances, and it was moderately successful throughout, but with no approach to brilliance,

being lifted out of the groove of the ordinary competent practitioner in the north of England

by a single great event. By this event, also it was ruled, and all details of a domestic and private

kind disappear beneath the shadow cast by the discovery of hypnotism.

Listen, James Brade did study and advance hypnotism, and we're going to talk about that today,

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