John Milne Bramwell


John Milne Bramwell was a Scottish physician, surgeon and specialist medical hypnotist. He was born in Perth and educated at the University of Edinburgh.

Family

The fourth child and youngest son of James Paton Bramwell, chief consulting surgeon at the Perth Royal Infirmary and Eleanor Bramwell, née Oliver, John Milne Bramwell was born in Perth, Scotland on 11 May 1852.
One of his sisters, Elizabeth Ida Bramwell, become famous in Canada as the suffragette Ida Douglas-Fearn.
A second sister, Eleanor Oliver Bramwell, married Frank Podmore, psychical researcher, member of the Society for Psychical Research and founding member of the Fabian Society.
He married Mary Harriet Reynolds — the eldest surviving daughter of Captain Charles Sheppard Reynolds, formerly of the 49th Regiment, Bengal Native Infantry, and Assistant-Commissioner of the Assam Provinces, and Jessie Bramwell, née Blanch, who had been born in Assam, India — at St. John the Evangelist Church, at East Dulwich, on 6 July 1875.
They had two children: Mary Eleanor Oliver Bramwell and Elsie Dorothy Constant, née Bramwell.
He died on 16 January 1925 at the Miramare Palace Grand Hotel in Ospedaletti, Italy.

Education

Educated at Perth Grammar School and Edinburgh University, he graduated M.B. C.M. at Edinburgh University in 1873, in the same cohort as Charles Braid, the grandson of James Braid.

Medical practice

When Bramwell graduated from Edinburgh University, the Liverpool, Brazil, and River Plate Steam Ship Company appointed him as a surgeon. In the year that he worked for them he made three return trips to Brazil.
Then, for a short time, he was assistant-surgeon at the Perth City and County Infirmary, before he moved to Goole in Yorkshire, where he worked as a general practitioner, in partnership with Malcolm Morris FRCS and later with the noted dermatologist Sir Malcolm Morris KCVO of St Mary's Hospital, London.
Bramwell continued to practise in Goole for sixteen years until his interest and skills in hypnotism drew him to London in November 1892 where he became a highly respected specialist in medical hypnotism.

Hypnotism

His father had seen James Esdaile at work and, as a child, Bramwell had seen his father replicate Esdaile's mesmeric experiments.
While studying medicine at Edinburgh University, he was influenced by John Hughes Bennett, author of The Mesmeric Mania of 1851, With a Physiological Explanation of the Phenomena Produced, who revived Bramwell's interest in hypnotism.
On 28 March 1890 Bramwell gave a public demonstration in Leeds of the use of hypnotism for dental and surgical anæsthesia.
He travelled widely in Europe and visited most of the important centres of hypnotism. He also directly observed the work of Hippolyte Bernheim in Nancy, Jean-Martin Charcot at the Salpêtrière in Paris, Frederik Willem van Eeden and Albert Willem van Renterghem in Amsterdam, Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault in Nancy and Otto Georg Wetterstrand in Stockholm, at their respective clinics.
Bramwell, who had visited Charcot, the famous French neurologist, founder of the "Hysteria School" at the Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, characterised Charcot and his work as a throwback to mesmerism.
Around 1885 an associate of Charcot, Albert Pitres, another famous French neurologist at the Salpêtrière hospital, in a throwback to phreno-mesmerism, went even further, claiming that he had discovered zones hypnogènes, or "hypnogenetic zones" which, he said, when stimulated threw people into the hypnotic state, and zones hypnofrénatrices or "hypno-arresting zones", which, when stimulated, abruptly threw people out of that same hypnotic state.
Bramwell also visited Nancy on two occasions. From his observations and discussions there he felt that Hippolyte Bernheim and Ambroise-Auguste Liébeault had done little except reproduce Braid's earliest findings. Bramwell was also certain that they knew nothing about Braid's later developments of his theories and practices, his amended terminology and his mature understanding of the applications of hypnotic suggestion. In Bramwell's view, the theoretical position that Braid held at the end of his life was considerably more advanced than anything that was promoted by the "Suggestion School" in Nancy thirty-five years later.
Along with other members of the Society for Psychical Research, such as Henry Sidgwick, William James, Frederic Myers, Charles Lloyd Tuckey, Eleanor Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney and Arthur Myers — Gurney and the two Myers brothers had visited both the Salpêtrière and Nancy in 1885 — Bramwell made a thorough scientific investigation of hypnotism and hypnotic phenomena and, through his lectures, public demonstrations, research and publications did much to increase knowledge of the potential of hypnotism, especially as an effective form of medical intervention.

Promoter and defender of the heritage of James Braid

A talented specialist medical hypnotist and hypnotherapist in his own right, Bramwell made a deep study of the works of James Braid the founder of hypnotism and helped to revive and maintain Braid's legacy in Great Britain.
Bramwell had studied medicine at Edinburgh University in the same student cohort as Braid's grandson, Charles. Consequently, due to his Edinburgh studies, especially with Bennett, he was very familiar with Braid and his work; and, more significantly, through Charles Braid, he had access to publications, records, papers, etc. of Braid that were still held by the Braid family. He was, perhaps, second only to Preyer in his wide-ranging familiarity with Braid and his works.
In 1896 Bramwell noted that, “ is familiar to all students of hypnotism and is rarely mentioned by them without due credit being given to the important part he played in rescuing that science from ignorance and superstition”. He found that almost all of those students of hypnotism believed that Braid “held many erroneous views” and that “the researches of more recent investigators disproved ”.
Finding that “few seem to be acquainted with any of works except Neurypnology or with the fact that was only one of a long series on the subject of hypnotism, and that in the later ones his views completely changed”, Bramwell was convinced that this ignorance of Braid, which sprang from “imperfect knowledge of his writings”, was further compounded by at least three “universally adopted opinions”; viz., that Braid was English, “believed in phrenology”, and “knew nothing of suggestion”.
The mistaken view that Braid knew nothing of suggestion — and that the entire ‘history’ of suggestive therapeutics began with the Nancy “Suggestion” School in the late 1880s — had been widely promoted by Hippolyte Bernheim:
In 1897, Bramwell wrote on Braid's work for an important French hypnotism journal.
He also wrote another article for the same journal on hypnotism and suggestion, strongly emphasizing the importance of Braid and his work.
In his response to Bramwell's article, Bernheim repeated his entirely mistaken view that Braid knew nothing of suggestion.
Bramwell's response to Bernheim's misrepresentation was emphatic:

Publications

Bramwell's publications include: