In the 1900s hypnosis was discovered by Franz Anton Mesmer, a physician from Vienna who astounded the elite of the society of his time with his amazing demonstrations of what seemed to be his power of control over the mind and therefore the actions of his subject who would be a patient usually needing his advice and treatment for a myriad of afflictions.
When the patient showed a remarkable improvement leading to unmistakable signs of recovery friends of Mesmer as well as members of the scientific community of the period praised him and proclaimed his power which was called mesmerism.
The idea behind mesmerism was to put a human being to sleep or more appropriately a state of half-sleep and in this condition the subject person would next be given mental commands which modern-day psychotherapists refer to as suggestions.
The procedure usually involved the subject person imagining or visualizing himself/herself as having been finally cured and fully recovered from his/her malady. Some observers attest that the patient eventually became healed and fully recovered with no medication or a little of it if any, with the miracle largely attributed to the power of mesmerism or hypnotism as it was later called.

Subsequently, the techniques of hypnotism were adopted by stage performers and conjurers in which they would command, before a bunch of wild-eyed spectators, a voluptous lady or other person appropriately dressed for the occasion to go into a deep trance and then feel no pain as their palms or bodies are pricked with needles and sometimes the lady is left hanging suspended in the air supported only by swords with their pointed tips thrust into the neck and back of the sleeping subject.

This was the state-of-attairs of the subject of hypnotism, namely, that the idea of using it as a tool for healing or treatment of sick persons was all but lost in the emergence of a new genre or variety of the technique which was to use hypnotism exclusively for entertainment in galas and circuses. With the masses mainly diverted away from its true purpose
as a field of study, the topic of hypnotism was largely stashed away and not taken up except in reference to the usual fare which was, entertainment.
But towards the last quarter of the twentieth century, there came a renewed interest in hypnotism coming from all quarters of the population. The reason was because of the emergence of new thought and research that tended to confirm the earlier thesis of scholars following Mesmer’s example that hypnotism could heal the body.
What apparently remained was to conduct more research and study with emphasis on whether hypnotism could prevent disease and not just heal it. More sustained interest now centered on how it may be utilized for the prevention and cure of unwanted habits such as smoking. Read more..