Haydn Brown

Haydn Brown (1864 to 3 January 1936) was a British surgeon and psychotherapist who promoted controversial naturopathic techniques for treating disease. Educated at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, he worked as a neurological specialist and served as a surgeon with the Royal Army Medical Corps during the South African War. He later left general practice to promote his own method of suggestion therapy, which he called neuroinduction and which combined relaxation, suggestion and the laying on of hands; his 1919 book Advanced Suggestion (Neuroinduction) claimed success across a very wide range of illnesses, and medical reviewers were unconvinced. He is chiefly remembered because the General Medical Council removed his name from the Medical Register twice, in 1924 over a newspaper article on painless childbirth by autonomous relaxation, and in 1929 over advertisements for the same technique against asthma. His name was restored a year after the first removal. He also wrote Modern Medical Methods and Fighting for Life, and died of pneumonia at his home in Bloomsbury.