The Triumph of Medical Hypnotism

Abstract

This chapter will outline some of the evidence that hypnotism had gained public acceptability and medical legitimacy by the start of the twentieth century. This evidence includes an increase in scientific articles on hypnotism published in British medical journals over this period before the Great War. Traditional annual medical speeches given by eminent physicians started to pay attention to the aspects of the doctor-patient relationship which were therapeutic but not physical. The most eminent physician of his day William Osler became famous not only for his clinical wisdom but his ‘bedside manner.’ I will also describe the transitions which the medical profession required for that acceptance and assimilation. Medical hypnotism started to lose the trance state as the vehicle for positive healthy affirmations and for many clinicians, suggestive therapy was the preferred name for the technique in the period leading up to the First World War. Most of the original New Hypnotists joined a new club, the Medical Society for the Study of Suggestive Therapy. Charles Lloyd Tuckey was its first president and its membership included the most significant medical psychologists of the day. Its lectures were published in a journal for general practitioners. Hypnotism and suggestion not only survived but made several important contributions to the contemporary medical, psychological and the intellectual discourse.