James Esdaile

James Esdaile, M.D., E.I.C.S., Bengal (1808–1859), a Scottish surgeon, who served for twenty years with the East India Company, is a notable figure in the history of mesmerism.

For his father, the Scottish minister and writer, see James Esdaile (minister). For the British politician, see James Esdaile (lord mayor).

Hypnosis
Key figures
James Esdaile to James Braid (October 1850).[1][2]
    I shall find much in the books to interest and instruct me, as I did in your first

work on Hypnotism; but I shall not wait to read them before replying to your
communication.
    I have not seen any of the papers you allude to in the journals; but am glad
to hear that the doctors are, at last, condescending to turn their attention to one
of the most interesting and important subjects ever submitted to the consider-
sideration of the physiologist, the metaphysician, and natural philosopher.***
    Regarding the reality and cause of the mesmeric phenomena, if I venture to
differ from you even, who are so much better prepared to investigate the subject
[than certain individuals to whom the Doctor had referred], it is for reasons which
I hope you will consider worthy your attention. I am fully aware that there are
various modes of inducing the mesmeric symptoms, to a certain extent, without
the probability, or even possibility, of any vital force proceeding from the
operator being concerned in the matter. But I have never (except for experiment)
produced the mesmeric state of the system by the exhaustion of any organ,
such as the eye, [here the Doctor has overlooked the important part which the
mental act of fixed attention plays in this matter] or by acting strongly on the
imagination, or by any means that could favour self-mesmerization, as you will
perceive from the following resumé of my practice:—
    During the last six years I have performed upwards of 300 capital operations
of every description, and many of them of the most terrible nature, without in-
flicting pain on the patients; and, in every instance, the insensibility was
produced in this fashion.
    All knowledge of our intentions was, if possible, concealed from the patients;
and if they had never heard of mesmerism and painless operations, so much
the better. They were taken into a darkened room, and desired to lie down and
shut their eyes. A young Hindoo or Mussulman then seated himself at the
head of the bed, and made passes, without contact, from the head to the
epigastrium, breathing on the head and eyes all the time, and occasionally
resting his hands for a minute on the pit of the stomach. This often induced
the coma deep enough for the severest surgical operation in a few minutes;
but the routine was for me to examine the patient at the end of an hour, and
if he was not ready, the process was repeated daily. Taking the average, the
operation, of whatever description, was usually performed on the fourth or
fifth day.
    Probably as many more cases were subjected to the trance for medical
purposes, and were usually treated in the same way, for its convenience to
both parties.
    The enclosed remarkable case of clairvoyance, with transference of the
senses to the epigastrium, will show that the mesmeric control of the system
may be obtained, when the patient is not only asleep, but in a state of
intense natural coma.
    I have also entranced a blind man, and made him so sensitive, that I could
entrance him however employed, (eating his dinner, for instance) by merely
making him the object of my attention for ten minutes. He would gradually
cease to eat, remain stationary a few moments, and then plunge, head fore-
most, among his rice and curry.
    Numbers of madmen have been entranced in the lunatic asylum of Calcutta;
and I performed a mesmeric operation on one man who had cut his throat.
    I frequently desired the visitors of my hospitals to pretend to take the
portraits of patients, and to engage their attention as much as possible, by
conversing with them. I then retired to another room, and reduced them to
statues, without the possibility of their suspecting my intentions.
    How such phenomena can be accounted for, without presuming the
existence of a physical power transmitted from the operator to the subject,
passes my comprehension. That the mesmeric virtue can be communicated
to inanimate matter, is a physical fact, of which I am as well convinced as
of my own existence. It was my common hospital practice to entrance patients
for the purpose of having their sores burned with Nitric Acid, by giving them
mesmerised water to drink.
    Community of taste, and thought-reading, are among the most common of
the higher mesmeric phenomena; and how they are to be explained, except by
the transmission of the operator’s sensations, through his thought-stamped,
nervous fluid, sent to the brain of the subject, I cannot conjecture.
    "Important, if true", you will probably say. I can only say, that healthy senses,
a natural power of seeing things as they really are, and an earnest desire to
know the truth, whatever it may be, are perfectly useless for the acquisition
of knowledge, if all I have related is not perfectly true.
    Till such facts are known to medical men and natural philosophers, it is surely
premature to dogmatise about the only source of the mesmeric phenomena.
    It happened, curiously enough, that the sleeping Faqueer of Lahore had
attracted my attention about the very time your interesting account of him
appeared,[3] and I had actually written to Sir Henry Lawrence, begging him to
procure us information on the subject; but my departure from India, shortly

after, prevented my prosecution of the subject.

Family

The eldest son of the Rev. James Esdaile, D.D. (1775–1854), a minister of the Church of Scotland,[4] and Margaret Blair (1781–1843), he was born in Montrose, Angus, Scotland on 6 February 1808. He died in Sydenham, Kent on 10 January 1859.

He had three brothers, David Esdaile, D.D. (1811–1880) — an ordained cleric, who, along with James Esdaile (his brother), founded Edinburgh’s Ministers’ Daughters’ College (later known as Esdaile School), dedicated to the education of the daughters of Ministers of the Church of Scotland, and of Professors in the Universities of Scotland[5] — John Esdaile (1813–1877) and Robert Esdaile (1816–1882), both of whom migrated to Canada, and one sister, Janet (1818–1819).

He married three times.

  • His first wife, Mary Ann Christie, whom he had married on 6 June 1838, whilst on furlough in Scotland,[6] died on 9 November 1838, "in her 18th year",[7] on their voyage to India (they left England on 24 July 1838).[8]
  • His second wife, Sophia Ullmann — daughter of the Delaware banker, John James Ullmann (1754–1811) and Jeanne F. Ullmann (née LeFranc),[9] and the sister of lawyer and, later, (Union) General Daniel Ullmann (1810–1892)[10] — whom he married on 17 November 1842 at Chinsurah,[11] while stationed at Hooghly,[12][13] died in Calcutta on 27 July 1850, aged 44.[14]
  • He married his third wife, Eliza Morton (1807–1862) (née Weatherhead) in Calcutta on 3 February 1851.[15]

Education

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh,[16] graduating M.D. in 1829.[17][18]

India

In 1830, he was appointed as Civil Assistant Surgeon to the East India Company, and arrived in Calcutta, Bengal (which was, then, the capital of British India), in 1831.[19]

Having suffered from chronic bronchitis and asthma since his adolescence, Esdaile thought that India's different climate would be of benefit. Five years later, he suffered a total breakdown while working at Azamgarh, in Uttar Pradesh,[20] and, later, was given an extended furlough from 1836 to 1838.[21] During this time he travelled extensively; and his 1839 work, Letters from the Red Sea, Egypt, and the Continent,[22] was written as a result of these travels.

He returned from his furlough to Calcutta, and was soon appointed as Civil Surgeon to the small Hooghli Imambara Hospital;[23][24] and, through this appointment, he was also responsible for the hospital at Hooghly Jail.

From November 1839 to December 1841 Esdaile also served as the Principal of the prestigious Hooghly College,[25] located in the palladian mansion in Chinsurah that had been originally designed and built for "General Perron".[26] The College had been founded in August 1836 by the Bengali philanthropist Haji Muhammad Mohsin,[27] and Esdaile replaced the College's original principal — another surgeon, Thomas Alexander Wise, M.D. (1802–1889) — who had been promoted to the position of Principal at the Dacca College.[28]

He was serving as the Registrar of Deeds for Hooghly in 1843,[29] and as Secretary of the Hooghly Branch of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India in 1843.[30]

He was promoted to Presidency Surgeon in January 1848,[31][32] and was further promoted to Marine Surgeon (serving the Indian Navy) on 29 May 1849.[33]

Mesmeric analgesia

On 4 April 1845, Esdaile performed his first mesmeric procedure:

On 4 April 1845, [Esdaile] was treating a convict afflicted with double hydrocele. The drainage and injection of one side of the scrotum caused the patient such pain that Esdaile determined to try mesmerism upon him for the second operation…
he was successful in rendering the convict analgesic, and at once began to experiment with mesmerism both as a means of producing analgesia in surgical cases, and as a method of treatment for medical ones.[34]

By his own admission, Esdaile had never seen a mesmeric act; but, given the level of pain of this specific patient, and the understanding that he had gained from what he had read, it occurred to him that mesmerism might be of great value:

Seeing him [the patient] suffering in this way, I turned to the native sub-assistant surgeon, an élève [student] of the medical college, and asked him if he had ever seen Mesmerism? He said, that he had seen it tried at the medical college, but without effect. Upon which I remarked, "I have a great mind to try it on this man, but as I never saw it practised, and know it only from reading, I shall probably not succeed."[35]

Esdaile did succeed.

As performed by Esdaile, the mesmeric act was an exhausting procedure:

Esdaile's method was to make the patient lie down in dark room, wearing only a loin cloth, and [Esdaile would] repeatedly pass the hands in the shape of claws, slowly over the [patient's] body, within one inch of the surface, from the back of the head to the pit of the stomach, breathing gently on the head and eyes all the time [and] he seems to have sat behind the patient, leaning over him almost head to head and to have laid his right hand for extended periods on the pit of the stomach.[36]

As a consequence, Esdaile, whose own health was far from good, soon began to delegate this exhausting work which, when necessary, would involve "[having] a patient magnetized for hours each day for ten or twelve days [to his] native assistants, saving his own strength for the performance of surgery".[37]

In a short time, Esdaile had gained a wide reputation amongst the European and indigenous communities for painless surgery, especially in cases of the scrotal "tumours" that were endemic in Bengal at that time[38] due to filariasis (similar to elephantiasis) that was transmitted by mosquitoes. Esdaile's mesmeric anaesthesia was extremely safe:

     I beg, to state, for the satisfaction of those who have not yet a practical knowledge of the subject, that I have seen no bad consequences whatever arise from persons being operated on when in the mesmeric trance.
     Cases have occurred in which no pain has been felt subsequent to the operation even; the wounds healing in a few days by the first intention; and in the rest, I have seen no indications of any injury being done to the constitution.
     On the contrary, it appears to me to have been saved, and that less constitutional disturbance has followed than under ordinary circumstances.
     There has not been a death among the cases operated on.[39]

However, despite the successes with anaesthesia and his impressive surgical outcomes (exclusively with "native" patients), Esdaile was at a loss to explain these events in the light of his earlier (pre-mesmeric) six years' experience:

     Since [my first use of mesmerism in April 1845,] I have had every month more operations of this kind than take place in the native hospital in Calcutta in a year, and more than I had for the six years previous.
     There must be some reason for this, and I only see two ways of accounting for it: my patients, on returning home, either say to their friends similarly afflicted, "Wah! brother, what a soft man the doctor Sahib is! He cut me to pieces for twenty minutes, and I made him believe that I did not feel it. Isn't it a capital joke? Do go and play him the same trick ; you have only to laugh in your elbow, and you will not feel the pain."
     Or they say to their brother sufferers, — " Look at me ; I have got rid of my burthen, (of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, or 80 lbs., as it may be,) am restored to the use of my body, and can again work for my bread: this, I assure you, the doctor Sahib did when I was asleep, and I knew nothing about it;—you will be equally lucky, I dare say; and I advise you to go and try; you need not be cut if you feel it."
     Which of these hypotheses best explains the fact my readers will decide for themselves.
     It ought to be added, that most of these persons were not paupers, but people in comfortable circumstances, whom no inducement short of painless operations could tempt to enter a charity, or any other hospital; and all who know the natives are aware of this.[40]

In 1846, Esdaile's work with mesmerism-assisted painless surgery at Hoogly had come to the attention of the Deputy Governor of Bengal, Sir Herbert Maddocks. Maddocks appointed a committee of seven reputable (medical and non-medical) officials to investigate Esdaile's claims. They submitted a positive report (on 9 October 1846), and a small hospital in Calcutta was put at his disposal in November 1846.

By 1848, a mesmeric hospital supported entirely by public subscription was opened in Calcutta especially for Esdaile's work. It was closed 18 months later by the Deputy Governor of Bengal, Sir John Littler:[34] according to Cotton (1931, p. 170), although the Mott's Lane Mesmeric Hospital, opened in 1846, was permanently closed in 1848, Elliotson "continued to practise mesmerism at the Sukeas' Street Dispensary until he left India in 1851".[41]

In 1848, Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General of India, appointed Esdaile to the position of Presidency Surgeon; and, in 1849, whilst not supporting the continuation of the mesmeric hospital in Calcutta, Dalhousie had so much respect for Esdaile and his work, that he appointed him to the position of Marine Surgeon.

Esdaile retired from the British East India Company in 1853, upon the expiration of his 20 years' contract. He became a Vic-President of the London Mesmeric Infirmary,[42] and a Vice-President of the Scottish Curative Mesmeric Association (). After briefly returning to Perth in Scotland he settled in Sydenham where he died on 10 January 1859. He is buried at West Norwood Cemetery.

Connection with hypnotism

Esdaile is thought by many to have been a pioneer in the use of hypnosis for surgical anaesthesia in the era immediately prior to James Young Simpson's discovery of chloroform. However, Esdaile had studied neither hypnotism nor Mesmerism himself.

Although some would trace the practice of hypnotherapy back to Faria, Gassner, and Hell, it is conventional to trace what we now know as hypnotism back to the Scottish surgeon James Braid's reaction to a public exhibition of mesmeric techniques given by Charles Lafontaine in Manchester on 13 November 1841

There are some similarities between both the theory and practice of Victorian Mesmerism and hypnotism. Braid viewed the Bengal Government's report (i.e., Atkinson & O’Shaughnessy (1846)), on Esdaile's use of Mesmerism in an Indian hospital favourably, although only 30% of Esdaile's clients were entirely pain-free during their operations.[43] Yet, Braid also expressed reservations about Esdaile's claims of supernatural powers possessed by certain subjects, and noted that Esdaile's operations were yet to be demonstrated in British hospitals on British patients.

In theory I entirely differ from Dr. Esdaile. He is a Mesmerist – that is, he believes in the transmission of some peculiar occult influence from the operator to the patient, as the cause of the subsequent phenomena.[43]

In fact, as this report shows, Esdaile did not generally "Mesmerise" the patients himself but employed native Indian boys to spend 2–8 hours per day with each patient in a darkened room, employing a technique that involved breathing on the patient's body. The resemblance to the conventional techniques of Mesmerism is therefore minimal.

The artificial propagation of salmon

Esdaile was a keen salmon fisherman,[44] and it was "at [his] instigation that the proprietors of salmon-fishings on the Tay constructed the artificial breeding beds at Stormontfield" (Esdaile, 1857), when a letter, written by Esdaile, on the artificial propagation of salmon, "A Plan for Replenishing the River Tay with Salmon",[45] was submitted to a meeting of the proprietors on the Tay on 19 July 1852.[46][47][48][49][50][51]

gollark: Oh, it does things, just... odd things.
gollark: So it appears that while I can add to the strategy list at runtime, it doesn't do very much.
gollark: Great!
gollark: Prove it mathematically.
gollark: Thank you except ææææ it does this `Exception in map: (((meapiometics . #<procedure meapiometics at dilemma2.scm:1202>) (apiomemetics . #<procedure apiomemetics at dilemma2.scm:954>) (apl . #<procedure apl at dilemma2.scm:829>) (angry-tit-for-tat . #<procedure angry-tit-for-tat at dilemma2.scm:753>) (grudger . #<procedure grudger at dilemma2.scm:668>) (random-choice . #<procedure random-choice at dilemma2.scm:618>) ...) . #<procedure apiomemetics at dilemma2.scm:954>) is not a proper list` ææææ.

See also

Footnotes
  1. The only record of this correspondence is that reprinted in Braid (1852), pp. 78–80; the parenthetical comments in the square brackets are Braid's, and the three asterisks indicate a passage that had been deleted by Braid.
  2. Although John Elliotson had met both James Braid and James Esdaile in person; Braid never met Esdaile in person, although they did correspond, on a single occasion. The reply from Esdaile, dated October 1851 – a result of Braid sending some of his works to Esdaile – represents their only known contact. In the section wherein Braid records the correspondence, he described Esdaile as a surgeon "whose firmness of nerve, and dexterity of hand, and scientific skill, in every way stamped him as a man eminently qualified for being a leader in his profession" (p. 80).
  3. Braid, J., Observations on Trance; or, Human Hybernation, John Churchill, (London), 1850.
  4. Scott, H., Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, New Edition, Volume IV: Synods of Argyll, and of Perth and Stirling, Oliver and Boyd (Edinburgh), 1923, p. 232.
  5. Scott, H., Fasti Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ: The Succession of Ministers in the Church of Scotland from the Reformation, New Edition, Volume V: Synods of Fife, and of Angus and Mearns, Oliver and Boyd (Edinburgh), 1925, p. 303.
  6. Marriages, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 26, No. 104, (August 1838), p. 285.
  7. Deaths, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 28, No. 110, (February 1839), p. 142.
  8. Passengers to India: Per Duke of Bedford, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 26, No. 104, (August 1838), p. 284.
  9. Montgomery, E., Reminiscences of Wilmington, in Familiar Village Tales, Ancient and New, Johnston & Bogia, (Wilmington), 1872, pp. 200–201.
  10. "Daniel Ullmann", Obituary Record of Graduates of Yale University Deceased during the Academic Year Ending in June, 1893, p. 147.
  11. Originally two adjacent settlements on the west bank of the Hooghly River, Chinsurah (a.k.a. Chuchura) and Hoohghly were merged into a single municipality, now known as Hooghly-Chinsura, in 1865.
  12. Marriages, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 40, No. 157, (January 1843), p. 70.
  13. Esdaile's colleague, James Sutherland, the (at the time) Principal of Hooghly College, married Sophia's sister, Eliza Ullman, also at Chinsurah, a month later, on 26 December 1842. (Marriages, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 40, No. 159, (March 1843), p. 312).
  14. Bengal, Past & Present: Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Volume 5, Part 1, p. 55; Deaths, The India News, No. 194, (24 September 1850), p. 399.
  15. Marriages, The Indian News, No. 207, (2 April 1851), p. 153.
  16. The University of Edinburgh was also the alma mater of John Elliotson and James Braid.
  17. Student Record for James Esdaile -- University of Edinburgh, Centre for Research Collections, Individual Records, Students of Medicine.
  18. His 1829 dissertation was titled De Narcoticis ("On Narcotics") (see List of the Graduates in Medicine in the University of Edinburgh from MDCCV to MDCCCLXVI, Neill & Company, (Edinburgh), 1867, p. 87).
  19. He was appointed on 10 February 1831 (see "1193. Esdaile, James", p. 103, in Crawford, D.G., Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615–1930, Volume 1, London), 1930), and was taken on strength as an Assistant Surgeon on 20 July 1831 (see The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 6, No. 24, (December 1831), p. 189).
  20. 27 May (1835), The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 18, No. 72, (December 1835), p. 241.
  21. 2 January 1836: "Assist. Surg. James Edaile, M.D., for health" (Furloughs: To Europe, The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australasia, Vol. 20, No. 78, (June 1836), p. 105).
  22. Described as "a very entertaining, graphic and lively volume of letters" (Miscellaneous Critical Notices, The Calcutta Review, Vol. 6, No. 12, (1846), p. viii).
  23. "Military: By the President in Council", Calcutta Monthly Journal and General Register, (November 1839), p. 26: No. 16 of 1839.
  24. "The Hooghly Imambara Hospital … first established as an experimental measure in 1836 … derives its name from the fact that it originally formed a part of the Hooghly Imambara created out of the Trust Fund left by Haji Muhammad Mohsin": Banerji (1972), p. 610.
  25. Although he was unable to establish whether (or not) "the lectures were actually given", Zachariah (1936, p. 25) noted that, "in 1842, Dr. Esdaile, although no longer Principal, proposed to give some lectures on Chemistry and Physiology" — Zachariah was citing (see pp. 1 33, fn.85) "Extract from Proceedings of the Honorable the Vice President in Council in the Revenue Department under the date of 20th September 1831".
  26. Zachariah, K., History of Hooghly College, 1836–1936, Bengal Government Press, (Alipore), 1936 Archived 12 April 2017 at the Wayback Machine, p. 14; Annual Report of the College of Hadji Mohammud Moshin with its Subordinate Schools; and of the Colleges of Dacca and Kishnaghur, for 1850–51, F. Carbery, Military Orphan Press, (Calcutta), 1851, p. 42.
  27. See Dey (1893: 96/192) pp. 286–287, and (1893: 97/194), pp. 354–366; also Chaudhury (2012), pp. 55–59
  28. In the (30 June 1853) evidence that Wise provided to the House of Lords' Select Committee inquiry into "the Government of the Indian Territories", he provided extensive details of the structure, function, and operation of the Hooghly College (see Sessional Papers, (1852–3), pp. 221–234).
  29. Crawford (1914), pp. 137, 153–156.
  30. Horticultural Exhibition at Hooghly, Journal of the Agricultural & Horticultural Society of India, Vol. 2, Part 1, No. 8, (August 1843), p. 191.
  31. Medical: Appointments, Allen's Indian Mail, and Register of Intelligence for British and Foreign India, China, and All Parts of the East, Volume 6, No. 103, (22 June 1848), p. 361; Letter from the Marquis of Dalhousie to The Poor Law Guardians of Exeter, 27 June 1856 (Esdaile, 1856, p. 4).
  32. A Presidency Surgeon "under[took] the duty of attending all sick officers, military or civil, stationed at or on leave at the Presidency (viz., the administrative compound of the Bengal Presidency)" (Crawford, 1914, p. 10).
  33. Government Notifications: Civil and Eccesiastical: Appointments—Permanent, The Indian News, No. 167, (31 July 1849), p. 226.
  34. Gauld (1992), p. 223.
  35. Esdaile (1846), p. 43.
  36. Gauld (1992), p. 257.
  37. Gauld (1992), p. 223. Esdaile himself speaks of how "it is exacting too much of human nature to expect people to sweat for hours pawing the air (1846, p. 11, emphasis added).
  38. Some of these massive scrotal growths were as large as 112lbs/51kg (Gauld, 1992, p. 222).
  39. Esdaile (1846), p.xxiv.
  40. Esdaile (1846), pp. 218–219.
  41. See also Webb (1850), pp. 26–28.
  42. See, for example Report of the Sixth Annual Meeting of the London Mesmeric Infirmary, Walton & Mitchell, (London), 1855.
  43. Braid, "Facts and Observations, etc." (1847).
  44. See, for example, Mesmerism in India, pp. 40–41.
  45. Carnie (2008/2009), p. 19.
  46. "Propagation of Salmon", The (Hobart) Courier, (Friday, 21 October 1853), p. 3.
  47. Brown (1862), especially pp. 23–24, 44–47.
  48. Also, see Esdaile, D. (1865), especially 141–153,
  49. Buist (1866), pp. 4–6.
  50. Ashworth (1875), pp. 7.
  51. Stewart (1875).

References
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