Robert H. Collyer and Monsieur De Bonneville

In the mid-1800s, people engaged in both scientific and pseudoscientific efforts to try to understand how the brain worked. Dr. Robert Collyer studied phrenology, which focused on the shape of the head and its relation to characteristics and aptitudes believed to reside in separate regions of the brain. He traveled the country performing mesmerization— essentially, hypnotization—on people. Monsieur de Bonneville often served as Collyer’s willing subject and also practiced mesmerism on his own. Collyer would first place his hand on a person’s forehead and, as we see in this portrait, hold one or both hands. Note how Collyer stares into Bonneville’s closed eyes and how physically close, almost entwined, their bodies are. In some cases, Collyer would extract teeth or electrocute sitters to prove the power of mesmerization to control the mind. Recently, scholars have noted that Collyer laid the groundwork for the practice of surgical anesthesia.