Hypnosis has moved from the world of magic into the world of medicine. Hypnosis is being used to help people stop smoking, lose weight, overcome phobias and control pain in a variety of medicinal situations from childbirth to cancer.

Trance, which occurs spontaneously under certain psychological conditions, is artificially induced by means of hypnosis.

From 1845 to 1851 Dr Esdail was treating patients under mesmerism in Imambura hospital at Hoogly, Calcutta. Before he left India he had performed three hundred major operations and innumerable minor ones- all of them in mesmeric trance. He reduced the mortality in the operation for scrotal tumors from about 50 percent to 5 percent.

Esdail