DICTIONARY
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NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
ESDAILE, JAMES (1808–1859), surgeon and mesmerist, eldest son of the Rev. Dr. Esdaile of Perth, was born at Montrose 6 Feb. 1808. After the usual school education he studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and graduated there as M.D. in 1830. From boyhood his lungs had been delicate, and he was consequently recommended to attempt medical practice in a warm climate. He obtained a medical appointment in the service of the East India Company, and reached Calcutta in July 1831. He was stationed in the Bengal presidency, and for four years was capable of heavy work. At the end of 1835, however, he broke down, and went on furlough for about two years and a half. He had wide sympathies and many interests, and leaves a pleasant and lively account of this long holiday (Letters from the Red Sea, Egypt, and the Continent, Calcutta, 1839), in which he visited Egypt and Italy. He returned to Calcutta in November 1838, and was soon afterwards put in charge of the hospital at Hooghly, about twenty-five miles north of Calcutta. He describes the place as a wretched and obscure village, but was very busy in his professional work, and new and unexpected interests gradually absorbed him. He had read a little of mesmerism, 'but only scraps,' as he says, 'from the newspapers.' The outspoken declaration of Dr. Elliotson, in his Harveian oration of 1838, that he should despise himself if he denied the truth of the mesmeric phenomena, made a considerable impression on Esdaile. He had, however, never seen any one mesmerised before trying the expuriment himself, on 4 April 1845, on a Hindoo convict of middle age, who was in need of two extremely painful surgical operations. When the pain was most severe and only one opfration was complete, it occurred to him to try to soothe the patient by the 'mesmeric passes.' He made the attempt steadily, and after some time induced a condition of deep sleep, in which his patient was quite indifferent to sharp pin-pricks on the hands and very strongly pungent solution of ammonia in the mouth. In the opinion of the English judge and collector who witnessed and wrote their separate accounts of the scene, there was 'a complete suspension of sensibility to external impressions of the most painful kind.' A week later (11 April) Esdaile went a step further and mesmerised the same patient before the second and similar operation. The man readily became unconscious, showed no symptoms of pain during the operation, and when he woke thirteen hours later was quite unaware that anything had been done to him. These results were first printed in the 'India Journal of Medical and Physical Science,' May 1845, and evidence of similar anaesthesia in amputation of the arm and some major surgical operations quickly followed, The medical press declared that Esdaile must have been very easily duped. Neither Esdaile nor his critics were aware of the position established in the 'Neurypnology' of James Braid [q. v.] in 1843. Esdaile was generally regarded as an eminently honest and practical enthusiast. After the first year of this mesmeric practice he had accumulated more than a hundred cases of these anesthetic operations, and reported the results to the government, whereupon the deputy-governor of Bengal, Sir Herbert Maddock, appointed as a first test a committee of seven members, four of whom were medical men, to report on Esdaile's surgical operations. After some careful investigation of nine operations they drew up a very favourable description, followed by the conclusion that it was 'incumbent on the government to afford to their zealous and meritorious officer [Dr.
