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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/sim_ulacrum on 2024-09-21 19:32:56+00:00.

Original Title: James Esdaile was a 19th century Scottish surgeon who performed nearly 300 major surgeries (amputations, removal of cataracts, removal of massive tumors) without anesthesia and through the use of deep hypnosis

Exceprt form Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century by Edward Francis Kelly et al. 2007:

One case was that of a man who for two years had suffered from “a tumor in the antrum maxillare; the tumor had pushed up the orbit of the eye, filled up the nose, passed into the throat, and caused an enlargement of the neck” (Esdaile, 1846, p. 147). Although the patient proved difficult to mesmerize, Esdaile finally succeeded in doing so. Then, he reports the following:

I performed one of the most severe and protracted operations in surgery… I put a long knife in at the corner of his mouth, and brought the point out over the cheek-bone, dividing the parts between; from this, I pushed it through the skin at the inner corner of the eye, and dissected the cheek back to the nose. The pressure of the tumor had caused the absorption of the anterior wall of the antrum, and on pressing my fingers between it and the bones, it burst, and a shocking gush of blood, and brain-like matter, followed. The tumor extended as far my fingers could reach under the orbit and cheek-bone, and passed into the gullet, having destroyed the bones and partition of the nose…The man never moved, nor showed any signs of life, except an occasional indistinct moan. 39 (pp. 148-149)

EDIT: The quote was taken from Mesmerism in India, and its practical application in surgery and medicine by Esdaile. The whole text can be found on page 147 of the book. Here it is on Internet Archive: