page_title: History of hypnosis
section_title: Récamier and Reichenbach
hierarchical_section_title: History of hypnosis / Magnetism & Mesmerism / Récamier and Reichenbach
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Karl von Reichenbach (1788–1869) English: Carl Reichenbach (1788–1869)
context_page_description: Harry Arons was the biggest contributor in the 20th century to the acceptance of hypnosis by the medical & mental health community with his almost monthly training courses around the United States for over five decades.
  During his 52-year career he trained tens of thousands of doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists in the use of hypnosis to help their patients.
  He also pioneered in utilizing hypnosis in criminal investigation, and worked successfully with well-known attorneys like F. Lee Bailey in the famous Coppolino murder trial.
  His hypnosis techniques and procedures are still widely used by professionals to this day.
  The development of concepts, beliefs and practices related to hypnosis and hypnotherapy have been documented since prehistoric to modern times.
  Although often viewed as one continuous history, the term hypnosis was coined in the 1880s in France, some twenty years after the death of James Braid, who had adopted the term hypnotism in 1841.
  Braid adopted the term hypnotism to contrast his own, unique, subject-centred, approach with those of the operator-centred mesmerists who preceded him.
context_section_description: Récamier, in 1821, prior to the development of hypnotism, was the first physician known to have used something resembling hypnoanesthesia and operated on patients under mesmeric coma.
  In the 1840s and 1850s, Carl Reichenbach began experiments to find any scientific validity to "mesmeric" energy, which he called Odic force after the Norse god Odin. Although his conclusions were quickly rejected in the scientific community, they did undermine Mesmer's claims of mind control.  In 1846, James Braid published an influential article, The Power of the Mind over the Body, attacking Reichenbach's views as pseudoscientific.
caption: Reichenbach
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