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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



" sensitives " first experimented on, he invited a 

 large number of his friends and other persons in 

 Vienna to come to his dark room, and the result 

 was that about sixty persons, of various ages and 

 conditions, saw and described exactly the same 

 phenomena. Among these were a number of 

 literary, official, and scientific men and their 

 families, persons of a status fully equal to that 

 of Dr. Carpenter and the Fellows of the Royal 

 Society — such as Dr.- Nied, a physician ; Prof. 

 Endlicher, Director of the Imperial Botanic Gar- 

 den; Chevalier Hubert von Rainer, barrister; 

 Mr. Karl Schuh, physicist ; Dr. Ragsky, Professor 

 of Chemistry ; Mr. Franz Kollar and Dr. Diesing, 

 Curators in the Imperial Natural History Museum, 

 and many others. There was also an artist, Mr. 

 Gustav Anschiitz, who could see the flames, and 

 drew them in their various forms and combina- 

 tions. Does Dr. Carpenter really ask his readers 

 to believe that his explanation applies to these 

 gentlemen ? — that they all quietly submitted to 

 be told what they were to see, submissively said 

 they saw it, and allowed the fact to be published 

 at the time, without a word of protest on their 

 part from that day to this ? But a little exami- 

 nation of the reports of their evidence shows 

 that they did not follow each other like a flock of 

 sheep, but that each had an individuality of per- 

 ceptive power, some seeing one kind of flame 

 better than another ; while the variety of combi- 

 nations of magnets submitted to them rendered 

 anything like suggestion as to what they were to 

 see quite impossible, unless it were a deliberate 

 and willful imposture on the part of Baron von 

 Reich enbach. 



But again, Dr. Carpenter objects to the want 

 of tests, and especially his pet test of using an 

 electromagnet, and not letting the patients know 

 whether the electric circuit which "makes" and 

 " unmakes " the magnet was complete or broken. 

 How far this test, had it been applied, would have 

 satisfied the objector, may be imagined from his 

 entirely ignoring all the tests, many of them at 

 least as good, which were actually applied. The 

 following are a few of these: Test 1. Von Rei- 

 chenbach arranged with a friend to stand in 

 another room with a stone wall between him and 

 the patient's bed, holding a powerful magnet, the 

 armature of which was to be closed or opened at 

 a given signal. The patient detected, on every 

 occasion, whether the magnet was opened or 

 closed. Test 2. M. Baumgartner, a professor of 

 physics, after seeing the effects of magnets on 

 patients, took from his pocket what he said was 

 one of his most powerful magnets, to try its 



effects. The patient, to Von Reichenbach's aston- 

 ishment, declared she found this magnet, on the 

 contrary, very weak, and its action on her hardly 

 more perceptible than a piece of iron. M. Baum- 

 gartner then explained that this magnet, though 

 originally very powerful, had been as completely 

 as possible deprived of its magnetism, and that 

 he had brought it as a test. Here were suggestion 

 and expectation in full force, yet they did not in the 

 least affect the patient. (For these two tests, see 

 "Ashburner's Translation of Reichenbach," pp. 

 39, 40.) Test 3. A large crystal (placed in a new 

 position before each patient was brought into the 

 dark room ) was always at once detected by 

 means of its light, yellower and redder than that 

 from magnets (loc. cit., p. 86). Test 4. A patient 

 confined in a darkened passage held a wire which 

 communicated with a room in which experiments 

 were made on plates connected with this wire. 

 As these plates were exposed to sunlight or 

 shade, the patient described corresponding 

 changes in the luminous appearances of the 

 end of the wire (loc. cit., p. 14*7). Test 5. The 

 light from magnets, etc., was thrown on a screen 

 by a lens, so that the image could be instantly 

 and noiselessly changed in size and position at 

 pleasure. Twelve patients, eight of them healthy 

 and new to the inquiry, saw the image, and de- 

 scribed its alterations of size and position as the 

 lens or screen was shifted in the dark (loc. cit., p. 

 585). Dr. Carpenter's only reply to all this is, 

 that " Baron Reichenbach's researches upon 

 'Odyle' were discredited a quarter of a century 

 ago, alike by the united voice of scientific opinion 

 in his own country, and by that of the medical 

 profession here." Even if this were the fact, it 

 would have nothing to do with the matter, which 

 is one of experiment and evidence, not of the be- 

 lief or disbelief of certain prejudiced persons, 

 since to discredit is not to disprove. The painless 

 operations in mesmeric sleep were "discredited" 

 by the highest medical authorities in this country, 

 and yet they were true. But Dr. Elliotson, Dr. 

 Ashburner, and others, accepted Reichenbach's 

 discoveries ; and some of the Vienna physicians 

 even, after seeing the experiments with persons 

 "whose honor, truthfulness, and impartiality 

 they could vouch for," also accepted them as 

 proved. 



The fact of the luminosity of magnets was 

 also independently established by Dr. Charpignon, 

 who, in his "Physiologic, Medecine, et Meta- 

 physique du Magnetisme," published in 1845 — 

 the very same year in which the account of Von 

 Reichenbach's observations first appeared — says : 



