When one person has power or authority—such as a policeman, teacher, or government official, he can make other people obey certain commands he gives. But he can’t make them think or feel any way he wishes. The amazing thing about hypnosis is that a person who is hypnotized can actually be made to feel and think as the hypnotist wishes.

For example, a person who is hypnotized can be made to shiver as if he feels cold, or perspire as if he feels hot; his face can be made to turn white as with fright, or red as with embarrassment. He can even be made to hate his favorite food, or enjoy one which he always disliked. However, a person can rarely be hypnotized if he doesn’t wish to be; and he can’t be made to do something illegal or immoral, if he wouldn’t do such things normally.

This strange ability to influence the behavior and feelings of people is not a new discovery. In fact, it is as ancient as sorcery, magic, and medicine. The power of hypnosis has been known to certain people since earliest times, even among very primitive peoples. It was practiced by them as a kind of medicine in the earliest days of civilization.

Today, of course, hypnosis has been studied scientifically, and this scientific history of hypnosis goes back to the latter part of the eighteenth century. There was a doctor in Vienna, Franz A.Mesmer, who began to use hypnosis on patients who were mentally disturbed. It even came to be called “mesmerism.” But Dr.Mesmer didn’t quite understand what hypnosis was. He thought it was some kind of force, which he called “animal magnetism.” He believed this force flowed from the hypnotist to his subject.

Because of this strange theory, Dr.Mesmer and his “mesmerism” was considered a fraud by many other doctors. Then, about a hundred years later, an English doctor, James Braid, studied this subject more scientifically. He coined the words “hypnotism” and “hypnosis,” and from his time on it became a subject to be studied by scientists.