Hypnosurgery is, in fact, an old technique which is being revisited by doctors and surgeons in the 21st century. The use of hypnotism in surgery has a long history, and even accompanied the use of ether in the earliest medical operations. A 20th-century pioneer of the technique was the late Irish surgeon Jack Gibson, who in the 1950s and 1960s carried out hundreds of operations, including bone-setting, treatment for first-degree burns, plastic surgery and amputations, using just hypnosis to anaesthetise his patients.