Dr. Mesmer

Dr. Mesmer was doing hypnosis for healing in France in the 1600’s. But he decided to showcase it. He had these metal tubs built with metal poles attached to them and he would put metal filings in the bottom. Then he would have the people stand in the tubs and hold on to the poles. He said that the poles were aligned with the astral bodies and he had a glass wand and convinced them that when he touched them they would be animal magnetized. People would come from all over to watch it was really like a sideshow. He would guide the subjects into hypnosis through waves and passes and then he would touch them with the wand and they would react like they had been magnetized some would even go into convulsions. But he was healing a lot of people. The local doctors became irate and wanted to prove him a fraud. So the got a team of scientists together to investigate the astral bodies thing. Benjamin Franklin was part of the team. Naturally the team concluded that there was no connection to the astral bodies. And messmer was exciled and sent off as a charlatan because he tricked people into being well. But the thing they all missed was it worked. And it never made the impression that the mind could have a role to play. You see the subconscious mind does not know the difference between a real experience and a vividly imagined one. This is how we have been able to defeat cancer-using imagery. We trick the sub-conscious mind. Once you effect the belief system the sub-conscious mind goes to work getting all our healing powers working and probably using energy that we’re not even aware of. The creative mind takes over and miraculous things happen.
http://www.creativemindtraining.com/stress-sh.htm