DR. CARPENTER ON SPIRITUALISM. 



443 



say that the envelopes were expressly arranged to 

 prevent their being opened without detection, and 

 that the professor adds, " I have in my possession 

 one of the envelopes thus read, which has since 

 been opened, and I am convinced that the pre- 

 cautions taken precluded any other than lucid 



vision." 1 



Still more important, perhaps, is the testimony 

 of many eminent physicians to the existence of 

 these remarkable powers. Dr. Rostan, Parisian 

 Professor of Medicine, in his article " Magne- 

 tisme," in the " Dictionnaire de Medecine," says 

 (as quoted by Dr. Lee): "There 'are few things 

 better demonstrated than clairvoyance. I placed 

 my watch at a distance of three or four inches 

 from the occiput of the somnambulist, and asked 

 her if she saw anything. ' Certainly,' she replied, 

 ' it is a watch ; ten minutes to eight.' M. Ferrus 

 repeated the experiment with the same success- 

 ful result. He turned the hands of his watch 

 several times, and we presented it to her without 

 looking at it ; she was not once mistaken." The 

 Commissioners of the Royal Academie de Mede- 

 cine applied the excellent test of holding a finger 

 on each eyelid, when the clairvoyant still read 

 the title of a book, and distinguished cards. 

 (Quoted in Dr. Lee's "Animal Magnetism," p. 

 22.) Dr. Esdaile had a patient at Calcutta who 

 could hear and see through the stomach. This 

 was tested by himself with a watch, as in the 

 French case quoted above. (" Zoist," vol. viii., 

 p. 220.) Dr. Teste's account of the clairvoyance 

 of Madame Hortense is very suggestive. She 

 sometimes read wilh ease when completely band- 

 aged, and when a paper was held between her 

 eyes and the object ; at other times she could see 

 nothing, and the smallest fatigue or excitement 

 caused this difference. This excessive delicacy 

 of the conditions for successful clairvoyance ren- 

 ders all public exhibitions unsatisfactory ; and 

 Prof. Gregory " protests against the notion that 

 it is to be judged by the rough experiments of 

 the public platform, or by such tests as can be 

 publicly applied." For the same reason direct 

 money-tests are always objected to by experiencd 

 magnetizers, the excitement produced by the 

 knowledge of the stake or the importance of the 



1 Dr. Carpenter says that " the unsealing of letters and 

 the resealing them so as to conceal their having been 

 opened" are practised in Continental post-offices. No 

 doubt this can be done with an ordinary letter, but it is no 

 less certain that there are many ways of securing a letter 

 which absolutely preclude its being done undetected, and 

 Dr. Carpenter omits to state that such precautions are 

 here expressly mentioned by Prof. Gregory as having been 

 used in these experiments. 



particular test impairing or destroying the lucid- 

 ity. This is the reason why gentlemen and phy- 

 sicians like Prof. Gregory, Major Buckley, and 

 Dr. Haddock, who have, had the command of 

 clairvoyants, have not attempted to gain the 

 bank-notes which have at various times been 

 offered. Dr. Carpenter was very irate because I 

 suggested at Glasgow — not as he seems to have 

 understood that there was no note in Sir James 

 Simpson's envelope — but that the clairvoyants 

 themselves, if they heard of it, might very well 

 be excused if they thought it was a trick to im- 

 pose upon them. I find now that in the other 

 case quoted by Dr. Carpenter — the note for one 

 hundred pounds publicly stated to have been in- 

 closed by Sir Philip Crampton in a letter, and 

 placed in a bank in Dublin, to become the prop- 

 erty of any clairvoyant who should read the whole 

 of it — this was actually the case. After six 

 months the letter was opened, and the manager 

 of the bank certified that it contained no note at 

 all, but a blank check ! The correspondence on 

 the subject is published in the " Zoist," vol. x., 

 p. 35. Dr. Carpenter's indignation was therefore 

 misplaced ; for, as a medical knight in Ireland 

 did actually play such a trick, the mere suppo- 

 sition, on my part, that ignorant clairvoyants 

 might think that a medical knight in Scotland 

 was capable of doing the same, was not a very 

 outrageous one. 



We now come to the last part of Dr. Carpen- 

 ter's lecture — table-turning and spiritualism — and 

 here there is hardly any attempt to deal with the 

 evidence. Instead of this we have irrelevant 

 matters put prominently forward, backed up by 

 sneers against believers, and false or unproved 

 accusations against mediums. To begin with, 

 the old amusement of table-turning of fifteen or 

 twenty years ago, with Faraday's proof that it 

 was often caused by unconscious muscular ac- 

 tion, is again brought to the front. Table-tilting 

 is asserted to be caused in the same way, and an 

 "indicator" is suggested for proving this; and 

 the whole matter is supposed to be settled because 

 no one, so far as Dr. Carpenter is aware, " has 

 ever ventured to affirm that he has thus demon- 

 strated the absence of muscular pressure," and, 

 " until such demonstrations shall have been given, 

 the tilting — like the turning — of tables may be 

 unhesitatingly attributed to the unconscious mus- 

 cular action of the operators." We suppose Dr. 

 Carpenter will shield himself by the " thus " in 

 the above sentence, though he knows very well 

 that a far more complete demonstration of the 

 absence of muscular pressure than any indicator 



