uo 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



remarkable in his treatment of this subject. We 

 have been already told (p. 11) of the French 

 Scientific Commission which about a hundred 

 years ago investigated the pretensions of Mes- 

 nier, and decided, as might have been anticipated, 

 against him. Now we have the statement that 

 "it was by the French Academy of Medicine, in 

 which the mesmeric state had been previously 

 discussed with reference to the performance of 

 surgical operations, that this new and more ex- 

 traordinary claim {clairvoyance) was first carefully 

 sifted, in consequence of the offer made in 1837 

 by M. Burdin of a prize of 3,000 francs to any one 

 who should be found capable of reading through 

 opaque substances." The result was negative. No 

 clairvoyant succeeded under the conditions im- 

 posed. The reader unaccustomed to Dr. Car- 

 penter's historical method would naturally sup- 

 pose this statement to be correct, and that clair- 

 voyance w&sjirsl carefully sifted in France after 

 1837, though he might well doubt if offering a 

 prize for reading under rigid conditions was an 

 adequate means of sifting a faculty so eminently 

 variable, uncertain, and delicate, as clairvoyance 

 is admitted to be. What, then, will be his aston- 

 ishment to find that this same "Academie Royale 

 de Medecine" had appointed a commisson of 

 eleven members in 182G, who inquired into the 

 whole subject of mesmerism for Jive years, and in 

 1831 reported in full, and in favor of the reality 

 of almost all the alleged phenomena, including 

 clairvoyance. Of the eleven members, nine at- 

 tended the meetings and experiments, and all 

 nine signed the report, which was therefore 

 unanimous. This report, being full and elabo- 

 rate, and the result of personal examination and 

 experiment by medical men — the very " trained 

 and skeptical experts " who are maintained by 

 Dr. Carpenter to be the only adequate judges — 

 is wholly ignored by him. In this report we find 

 among the conclusions : " 24. We have seen two 

 somnambulists distinguish, with their eyes shut, 

 objects placed before them : name cards, read 

 books, writing, etc. This phenomenon took 

 place even when the opening of the eyelids was 

 accurately closed by means of the fingers." 1 Is 

 it not strange that the " historian " of mesmer- 

 ism, etc., should be totally ignorant of ^he ex- 

 istence of this report, which is referred to in 

 almost every work on the subject ? Yet he must 

 be thus ignorant, or he could never say, as he 

 does in the very same page quoted above (p. 71), 

 " that, in every instance (so far as I am aware) in 



1 " Archives Generates de M6decine," vol. xx. ; also in 

 Lee's " Animal Magnetism, 1 ' pp. 13-29. 



which a thorough investigation has been made 

 into those 'higher phenomena' of mesmerism, 

 the supposed proof has completely failed." It 

 cannot be said that investigation by nine medi- 

 cal men, carried on for five years with every 

 means of observation and experiment, and elab- 

 orately reported on, was not " thorough ; " whence 

 it follows that Dr. Carpenter must be ignorant of 

 it, and our readers can draw their own inference 

 as to the value of his opinion, and the dependence 

 to be placed on his scientific and historical treat- 

 ment of this subject. 



More than twenty -five pages of the book are 

 occupied with more or less detailed accounts of 

 the failures and alleged exposures of clairvoy- 

 ants, while not a single case is given of a clair- 

 voyant having stood the test of rigid examina- 

 tion by a committee, or by medical or other ex- 

 perts, and the implication is that none such are 

 to be found. But every inquirer knows that 

 clairvoyance is a most delicate and uncertain 

 phenomenon, never to be certainly calculated on, 

 and this is repeatedly stated in the works of Lee, 

 Gregory, Teste, Dcleuze, and others. How, then, 

 can any number of individual failures affect the 

 question of the reality of the comparatively rare 

 successes. As well deny that any rifleman ever 

 hit the bull's-eye at one thousand yards, because 

 none can be sure of hitting it always, and at a 

 moment's notice. Several pages are devoted to 

 the failure of Alexis and Adolphe Didier under 

 test-conditions in England, ending with the sneer- 

 ing remark, "Nothing, so far as I am aware, has 

 ever been since heard of this par nobile fratrum.' 1 '' 

 Would it (to use an established formula) surprise 

 Dr. Carpenter to hear that these gentlemen re- 

 mained in England a considerable time after the 

 date he alludes to, that they have ever since re- 

 tained their power and reputation, and that both 

 still successfully practise medical clairvoyance, 

 the one in London and the other in Paris ? To 

 balance the few cases of failure by Alexis, Dr. 

 Lee has given his personal observations of ten 

 times as many successes, some of them of the 

 most startling kind (" Animal Magnetism," pp. 

 255-277). We can only find room here for two 

 independent and complete tests. The first is 

 given by Sergeant Cox, as witnessed by himself. 

 A party of experts was planned to test Alexis. 

 A word was written by a friend in a distant town 

 and enclosed in an envelope, tvilhoul any of the 

 party knowing what the word was. This envelope 

 was inclosed successively in six others of thick 

 brown paper, each sealed. This packet was 

 handed to Alexis, who placed it on his forehead, 



