Note that Bramwell, who had personally conducted many well-structured experimental examinations into mesmerism, hypnotism and hypnotic phenomena over a number of years, also included a number of important additional observations on "sources of error" (at Bramwell (1903), pp. 144–49) that he had discovered in the course of conducting his own investigations. In conclusion (at Bramwell (1903) p. 149), Bramwell recommended that experimenters adopted the following rules:
"(1) Never experiment with paid subjects.
(2) If possible, choose healthy men: they will not suffer from a hysterical desire to appear interesting.
(3) Whenever it can be done, the operator should select subjects whom he knows and can trust.
(4) The hypnotised subject, no matter in what stage, should be regarded not only as awake, but also as possibly possessing increased activity of the special senses.
(5) All physiological experiments ought to be conducted in a laboratory, and tested with instruments of precision. The operator should confine himself to exciting the phenomena, which should invariably be recorded by an independent observer.
(6) Psychological experiments cannot be conducted in the same way as physiological ones. Amnesia, for example, can neither be weighed in a balance nor precipitated in a test-tube. Experiments of this kind should therefore not only be numerous, but be made on many different subjects, with every precaution taken to ensure their trustworthiness. Further, the results should be checked by independent observers, and everything done to prevent error arising through the operator's unconscious self-deception."
The title page of Simon's 1883 translation of Braid's Neurpnology into French – viz., "Neurypnology: Treatise on Nervous Sleep or Hypnotism by James Braid,translated from the English by Dr. Jules Simon, with a preface by C. E. Brown-Séquard" – gives a misleading impression.
Simon is unequivocally clearin his "Translator's notes", at pp. xi–xv, that his (Simon's) version of the item conventionally designated "On Hypnotism" (viz., appended to Neurpnology at pp. 227–62) is a translation, into French, of the German text of William Thierry Preyer's (1881) translation of Braid's original text (as "Über den Hypnotismus" at pp. 59–96).
The English text had been given to Preyer, by George Miller Beard, who had received it from Étienne Eugène Azam (the original recipient).
Simon had never seen the original English text of Braid's manuscript.
Braid's son, James Braid, M.D., confirmed to Preyer that the English manuscript that he (Preyer) had translated had been written in his father's own hand ("Der Sohn, Dr. James Braid, erkannte sogleich die Handschrift seines Vaters, als ihm das Schriftstück vorlegt", Preyer (1881), p. 62).
