Photo credit: Sung Park
British doctor John Elliotson was a senior physician at University Hospital, London, in 1837 when he began violating all sorts of future codes of medical ethics by publicly experimenting with two adolescent girls dubbed the Okey Sisters. The girls had been admitted to University Hospital for treatment of epilepsy. Elliotson was at the time enthralled by the newly introduced medicinal practice of “mesmerism,” with tales drifting into London about a successful doctor in India who had been using hypnosis to help treat his patients. While hypnosis as a medical technique certainly has some efficacy, its mysterious qualities (even today the phenomenon is little understood) made it ripe for exploitation...