A professor of ambulatory health care at the department of medicine in Nancy, Hippolyte Bernheim was born in Mulhouse on April 27, 1840, and died in Paris on February 2, 1919. He studied medicine in Strasbourg and, when he received his degree in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian war, he decided to practice in France. In 1879 he was offered the chair of ambulatory medicine at the then-new department of medicine in Nancy. Around 1882, in spite of his initial reticence, he agreed to visit Ambroise Liebeault's "clinic." Convinced of the efficacy of Liebeault's methods, Bernheim began to use hypnosis on some of his patients, generally working with people suffering from a variety of infectious diseases. In 1884 he published a scathing attack on the Salpêtrière: hysteria and hypnosis were no more than cultural phenomena aroused by the power of suggestion.

Bernheim now became the spokesman of a new school that was internationally...