Jack Stanley Gibson

Short abstract

Surgeon who advocated the use of hypnosis as an alternative to anaesthetics

The Irish surgeon Jack Gibson believed in the power of the mind above all else and pioneered the use of hypnosis in surgery for over 40 years. He claimed to have performed more than 4000 procedures without anaesthesia (www.drjackgibson.com/biography.html) and he inspired several generations of doctors to take up the practice of hypnosis, both in surgery and in treating psychosomatic disorders or disease. He also claimed to have cured himself of basal cell cancer and chronic varicose veins through self hypnosis.

Jack produced a series of gramophone records, cassette tapes, and CDs from 1965 onwards, dealing with psychosomatic disorders and based on self hypnosis. One of these, How to Stop Smoking, became the best selling LP in Ireland in 1971. He also produced a video entitled The Power of the Subconscious, showing himself performing eye surgery under hypnosis in the 1960s, and he published three books: The Life and Times of an Irish Hypnotherapist ( 1989), Relax and Live ( 1992), and Memoirs of an Irish Surgeon—An Enchanted Life ( 1999).

Jack Gibson was a short, balding dynamo of a man, once a James Mason lookalike, but latterly closer to Nelson Mandela with Ghandi's beautiful smile. He was a walking contradiction who was the bane of many a hospital hierarchy or high court judge: he was alternative yet conventional, a rebellious yet establishment figure, informal yet intense, self mocking yet proud.

After qualifying in 1933 and becoming a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland in 1934, he did locums in Aden, Malawi, and South Africa. In 1939 he became dean of the Medical Aids School (later known as the Durban Medical School). During the second world war Jack worked for the Emergency Medical Service in Newcastle, Liverpool, and Weymouth, treating soldiers wounded at Dunkirk and during D Day.

Jack returned to South Africa, working at the Brakepan Hospital and as a general practitioner in 1946-9, and then came back north to Guernsey in 1950. He returned to Africa as a surgeon at the Haile Selassie Hospital, Ethiopia, in 1959, and finally returned to his native Ireland as resident surgical officer at Dr Steeven's Hospital, in Dublin, later that year. He also had a long career as an expert medical witness.

He leaves two grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Jack Stanley Gibson, surgeon and hypnotherapist Naas, County Kildare, Ireland (b 1909; q 1933; FRCSI, DTM&H), d 2 April 2005.