Their association to "daydreaming" was often going blank rather than creating vividly recalled fantasies. Both score equally high on formal scales of hypnotic susceptibility. Individuals with dissociative identity disorder have the highest hypnotisability of any clinical group, followed by those with posttraumatic stress disorder. People have been entering into hypnotic-type trances for thousands of years. In many cultures and religions, it was regarded as a form of meditation. Modern-day hypnosis, however, started in the late 18th century and was made popular by Franz Mesmer, a German physician who became known as the father of 'modern hypnotism'. In fact, hypnosis used to be known as 'Mesmerism' as it was named after Mesmer. Mesmer held the opinion that hypnosis was a sort of mystical force that flows from the hypnotist to the person being hypnotised, but his theory was dismissed by critics who asserted that there is no magical element to hypnotism. Abbé Faria,a Luso-Goan Catholic monk, was one of the pioneers of the scientific study of hypnotism, following on from the work of Franz Mesmer. Unlike Mesmer, who claimed that hypnosis was mediated by "animal magnetism", Faria understood that it worked purely by the power of suggestion. Before long, hypnotism started finding its way into the world of modern medicine. The use of hypnotism in the medical field was made popular by surgeons and physicians like Elliotson and James Esdaile and researchers like James Braid who helped to reveal the biological and physical benefits of hypnotism. According to his writings, Braid began to hear reports concerning various Oriental meditative practices soon after the release of his first publication on hypnotism, "Neurypnology" (1843). He first discussed some of these oriental practices in a series of articles entitled "Magic, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, etc., Historically & Physiologically Considered". He drew analogies between his own practice of hypnotism and various forms of Hindu yoga meditation and other ancient spiritual practices, especially those involving voluntary burial and apparent human hibernation. Braid's interest in these practices stems from his studies of the "Dabistān-i Mazāhib", the "School of Religions", an ancient Persian text describing a wide variety of Oriental religious rituals, beliefs, and practices. Last May [1843], a gentleman residing in Edinburgh, personally unknown to me, who had long resided in India, favored me with a letter expressing his approbation of the views which I had published on the nature and causes of hypnotic and mesmeric phenomena.