[3] When Bramwell graduated from Edinburgh University, the Liverpool, Brazil, and River Plate Steam Ship Company appointed him as a surgeon.

As we have seen, after leaving India he lived for some time in my native town, Perth, and many of his experiments were seen and afterwards reproduced by my father, the late Dr. J. P. Bramwell.

Soon after leaving Edinburgh I became busily engaged in general practice, and hypnotism was almost forgotten until I learned that it had been revived in the wards of the Salpêtrière.

This was reported in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet, and, in consequence, so many patients were sent to me from different parts of the country that I decided to abandon general practice, and to devote myself to hypnotic work.

As I was well aware of the fate that had awaited earlier pioneers in the same movement [viz., hypnotism], I naturally expected to meet with opposition and mis- representation.

My interest in hypnotism has brought me in contact with many medical men in other countries, and I owe a debt of gratitude for the kindness and courtesy invariably shown me by those whose cliniques I have visited in France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Holland, and Switzerland.

While studying medicine at Edinburgh University, he was influenced by John Hughes Bennett (1812–1875), author of The Mesmeric Mania of 1851, With a Physiological Explanation of the Phenomena Produced (1851), who revived Bramwell's interest in hypnotism.

Bramwell was also certain that they knew nothing about Braid's later developments of his theories and practices, his amended terminology and his mature understanding of the applications of hypnotic suggestion.

In Bramwell's view, the theoretical position that Braid held at the end of his life (viz., 1860) was considerably more advanced than anything that was promoted by the "Suggestion School" in Nancy thirty-five years later.

Amid much that was false, they had discovered genuine phenomena, and investigated them in a scientific spirit, and successfully employed their knowledge for the relief of pain and the cure of disease.

[Braid's] views, too, as already mentioned, underwent constant change and development; and I hope to show, when discussing hypnotic theories, that he ended by holding opinions which are far in advance of those generally accepted at the present day.

(1903), p.39.Along with other members of the Society for Psychical Research, such as Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), William James (1842–1910), Frederic Myers (1843–1901), Charles Lloyd Tuckey (1854–1925), Eleanor Sidgwick (1845–1936), Edmund Gurney (1847–1888) and Arthur Myers (1851–1894) — Gurney and the two Myers brothers had visited both the Salpêtrière and Nancy in 1885[7] — Bramwell made a thorough scientific investigation of hypnotism and hypnotic phenomena and, through his lectures, public demonstrations, research and publications did much to increase knowledge of the potential of hypnotism, especially as an effective form of medical intervention.

In 1896 Bramwell noted that,[9] "[Braid's name] is familiar to all students of hypnotism and is rarely mentioned by them without due credit being given to the important part he played in rescuing that science from ignorance and superstition".