In a lecture at the National Library of Medicine, historian Katrin Schultheiss, PhD, demonstrated how hypnosis in 19th-century France both fascinated and unsettled doctors, lawyers, and the public alike. At the center of this is Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), a neurologist, psychologist against his will, and central figure at the L’Hôpital Salpêtrière in Paris, where the medical and public debate on hypnosis took hold in 19th-century France.

In the public consciousness, Charcot is still remembered in two roles: as a pioneer of neurology, whose descriptions of conditions such as multiple sclerosis continue to influence the field to this day, and as the physician who demonstrated hysteria and hypnosis in the lecture hall. The latter, in particular, illustrates that medicine did not merely combat hypnosis as a danger; it also brought it into the public eye, made it popular, and thus rendered it all the more unsettling.

A Death in the Lion’s Cage

In 1890, a traveling hypnotist in Béziers (a city in southern France) led a young girl into a cage with a live lion. The scene was apparently intended to prove the depth of her trance: no fear, no protest, no reaction to the immediate danger. The experiment ended fatally. The lion attacked the hypnotized girl; she died shortly afterward in the hospital.

For doctors who wanted to ban public hypnosis performances, the case provided a stark example. Here, a young woman appeared to be at the mercy of a showman who possessed neither medical training nor scientific accountability. The girl appeared as a passive victim, comparable to a sleeping person being attacked.

The accident occurred against the backdrop of traveling hypnosis shows that filled large halls across Europe and featured their acts alongside magic, spiritualism, and animal training. From the perspective of many doctors, this was not harmless entertainment. They saw it as the uncontrolled application of a medically relevant procedure that, in their view, belonged in professional hands.

Murder, Suggestion, and Guilt

At the same time, another case was making headlines in Paris: a young woman was accused of murdering and robbing a wealthy bailiff together with her lover. Sexuality, violence, and social decline were welcome topics for the press. Legally and medically, however, another question became decisive: Had the defendant acted of her own free will?

The lawyer Jules Liégeois from the Nancy School in Nancy, France, saw hypnotic suggestion as a possible explanation. He reported to the court on experiments in which hypnotized individuals apparently committed theft, made false statements, or committed murder. A suggestion, he warned, could have been planted days or weeks earlier; those affected would not have to remember either the hypnosis or the command.

Paul Brouardel, a physician and medical-legal expert, disagreed. He argued that anyone seeking to invoke hypnosis as a mitigating factor must present reliable evidence: both for the trance itself and for the subject’s susceptibility to hypnosis. He interpreted the defendant’s dependence on her lover more as a form of personal domination. The court adopted this view and did not accept hypnosis as a mitigating circumstance.

Salpêtrière vs Nancy

The trials brought to light a fundamental professional conflict. For Charcot and the Salpêtrière school, hypnotizability was a sign of latent or manifest hysteria. Hypnosis appeared to be artificially induced hysteria — both a diagnostic clue and an experimental method. Charcot identified three stages of hypnosis — catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism — each marked by distinct physical signs that, he argued, could not simply be mimicked.

Hippolyte Bernheim (1840-1919) and the Nancy School saw things differently. For them, hypnosis was not a pathological state but rather an intensification of normal suggestibility. This opened up new therapeutic possibilities: pain relief, behavioral modification, perhaps even anesthesia. At the same time, unease grew: If all people are suggestible, what remains of free will?

Charcot’s position is medically interesting because he did not view hypnosis as mere performance. He sought physical signs of disorders, though these were difficult to identify anatomically. His focus was on the relationship between the brain, the body, and the psyche — and on an early, still-clumsy form of neuropsychological thinking.

The Clinic as a Stage

The Salpêtrière was not a closed-off space dedicated solely to medicine. Charcot’s lectures attracted not only doctors and students but also writers, journalists, actors, and politicians. In the amphitheater, female patients displayed fear, obedience, or apparent hallucinations on command; in dramatic experiments, they were even supposed to attack or poison other people.

Contemporaries debated whether these were genuine symptoms or role-playing for an appreciative audience. Charcot pointed to physical signs that were meant to rule out deception. Yet it was precisely this certainty that later lost credibility.

At this point, Schultheiss’s argument becomes particularly clear: Physicians were not merely opponents of popular hypnotists. They turned hypnosis itself into a public event. Open lectures, clinical demonstrations, and reports in medical journals lent the practice prestige and drama. In this way, medicine itself generated some of the fascination and fear that it subsequently sought to regulate.

Regulation Without Clear Boundaries

By the late 1880s, popular hypnosis demonstrations were widely regarded as a threat to public health. One of the most famous stage hypnotists was Donato, whose real name was Alfred-Édouard D’Hont (1845-1900). In 1887, he lost his performance license in Milan; in Bologna, theater owners were no longer allowed to rent him space. By 1888, Austria, Italy, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and most Swiss cantons had banned public hypnosis demonstrations. Belgium followed shortly thereafter.

England and Russia also regulated the practice, albeit in different ways. England did not ban hypnosis outright but permitted it only for scientific purposes. In Russia, starting in 1891, it could only be practiced in the presence of three doctors. France reacted more hesitantly. Bordeaux banned public performances following the outbreak of a hypnotic “epidemic” and a suicide attempt in connection with one of Donato’s performances; however, a nationwide ban was never enacted.

The French Medical Act of 1892 clarified the boundaries of the medical professions but made no mention of hypnosis. Lay hypnotists were therefore able to continue performing as long as they did not promise treatment. Donato was still touring France in 1924.

Reason vs the Uncanny

Georges Albert Edouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette (1857-1904), a student of Charcot, was a particularly strong advocate for regulation. In criminal or unscrupulous hands, he warned, hypnosis could become a weapon against the body and morality. Other doctors feared not so much hypnotically induced murder as nervous breakdowns, hysterical fits, and psychological contagion.

This was not merely a matter of professional ethics. For many doctors, hypnosis came to be associated with spiritualism and belief in miracles. It became a disruptive force within a medical profession that saw itself as the realm of reason.

Charcot and many of his colleagues sought to bring hypnosis into the realm of scientific medicine. Yet their experiments, in particular, demonstrated just how blurred the line remained between clinical findings, suggestion, and public spectacle.

This story was translated from Univadis Germany, part of the Medscape Professional Network.