DR. CARPENTER OF SPIRITUALISM. 



441 



and in three minutes and a half wrote the con- 

 tents correctly, imitating the very handwriting. 

 (" What am I ? " vol. ii., p. 1G7.) Now, unless 

 this statement by Sergeant Cox is absolutely 

 false, a thousand failures cannot outweigh it. 

 But we have, if possible, better evidence than 

 this ; and Dr. Carpenter knows it, because I 

 called his attention to it in the Daily News. Yet 

 he makes no allusion to it. I refer to the testi- 

 mony of Robert Iloudin, the greatest of modern 

 conjurers, whose exploits are quoted by Dr. Car- 

 penter, when they serve his purpose (pp. 76, ill.). 

 He was an absolute master of card-tricks, and 

 knew all their possibilities. He was asked by 

 the Marquis de Mirville to visit Alexis, which he 

 did twice. He took his own new cards, dealt 

 them himself, but Alexis named them as they lay 

 on the table, and even named the trump before it 

 was turned up. This was repeated several times, 

 and Houdin declared that neither chance nor 

 skill could produce such wonderful results. He 

 then took a book from his pocket and asked 

 Alexis to read something eight pages beyond 

 where it was opened, at a specified level. Alexis 

 pricked the place with a pin, and read four words, 

 which were found at the place pricked nine pages 

 on. He then told Houdin numerous details as to 

 his son, in some of which Houdin tried to deceive 

 him, but in vain ; and when it was over Houdin 

 declared it " stupefying," and the next day signed 

 a declaration that the facts reported were correct, 

 adding, " The more I reflect upon them, the more 

 impossible do I find it to class them among the 

 tricks which are the object of my art." The two 

 letters of Robert Houdin were published at the 

 time (May, 1S47) in Le Steele, and have since ap- 

 peared in many works, among others in Dr. Lee's 

 "Animal Magnetism" (pp. 163 and 231). 



One of the supposed exposures made much 

 of by Dr. Carpenter is that of Dr. Hewes's 

 " Jack," which is suggestive as showing the com- 

 plete ignorance of many experimenters thirty years 

 ago as to the essential conditions of the manifes- 

 tation of so delicate and abnormal a faculty as 

 clairvoyance — ignorance shared in by believers 

 and skeptics alike. According to Dr. Carpenter 

 (whose account he informs me is taken from an 

 article by Dr. Noble in the British and Foreign 

 Medical Review of April, 1845), Jack's eyes were 

 " bound down by surgeons with strips of ad- 

 hesive plaster, over which weve folds of leather, 

 again kept in place by other plasters." Jack 

 then read off, without the least hesitation, every- 

 thing that was presented to him. But a young 

 Manchester surgeon had his eyes done up in the 



same manner, and, by working the muscles of fiis 

 face till he had loosened the plasters, was enabled 

 to read by looking upward. The conclusion was 

 immediately jumped at that this was the way 

 Jack did it, although no working of the muscles 

 of the face had been observed, and no looking 

 upward described. Instead, however, of repeat- 

 ing the experiment under the same conditions, 

 but more watchfully, it was proposed that the 

 entire eyes should be covered up with a thick coat- 

 ing of shoemakers' 1 wax ! The boy objected and 

 resisted, and it was put on by force ; and then, 

 the clairvoyant powers being annihilated, as 

 might have been anticipated, there. was great 

 glorification among the skeptics ; and Dr. Carpen- 

 ter indulges himself in a joke, telling us that 

 Jack now " plainly saw, even with his eyes shut, 

 that his little game was up." To any one who 

 considers this case, even as related by Dr. Car- 

 penter, it will be evident that the boy was a 

 genuine clairvoyant. Adhesive plaster, properly 

 applied by a medical man on a passive subject, 

 is not to be loosened by imperceptible working 

 of the muscles ; and it is too great a demand upon 

 our credulity to ask us to believe that this oc- 

 curred undetected by the acute medical skeptics 

 watching the whole procedure. We have, how- 

 ever, fortunately, another case to refer to, in 

 which this very test was carried out to its proper 

 conclusion by examining the state of the plaster 

 after the clairvoyance, when the alleged looseness 

 could be instantly detected. A clairvoyant boy 

 at Plymouth was submitted to the examination 

 of a skeptical committee, who appear to have 

 done their work very thoroughly. First his eyes 

 were examined, and it was found that the balls 

 were so turned up that, even were the eyelids 

 a little apart, ordinary vision was impossible. 1 

 Then he was closely watched, and, while the eye- 

 lids were seen to be perfectly closed, he read 

 easily. Then adhesive plaster was applied, care- 

 fully warmed, in three layers, and it was watched 

 to see that the adhesion was perfect all round 

 the edges. Again the boy read what was pre- 

 sented to him, sometimes easily, sometimes with 

 difficulty. At the end of the experiments the 

 plaster was taken off strip by strip by the com- 

 mittee, and it was found to be perfectly secure, 

 and the eyelids so completely glued together that 

 it was a work of some difficulty to get them open 

 again. This case is recorded, with the names of 

 the committee, in the " Zoist," vol. iv., pp. 84-88 ; 



1 This is a constant feature of the true mesmeric trance, 

 hut "Jack's" accusers seem to have known nothing about 

 it. 



