448 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



This clear and precise statement demonstrates 

 the untrustworthiness of the authority on whom 

 Dr. Carpenter relies, even if it does not indicate 

 his disposition to manufacture evidence against 

 the medium in question. At all events, with the 

 more complete account of the whole episode now 

 before them, our readers will, we are sure, admit 

 that the evidence is by no means free from sus- 

 picion, and is quite insufficient to justify its be- 

 ing used to support a public charge of deliberate 

 imposture. It also affords another example of 

 how Dr. Carpenter jumps at explanations which 

 are totally inapplicable to the facts in other 

 cases, as, for example, to the production of flow- 

 ers and ferns in my own room, as narrated in my 

 " Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," page 164, 

 and to that in the house of Mr. T. Adolphus Trol- 

 lope, as given in the "Dialectical Report," pages 

 277 and 372, in which case the medium had been 

 carefully searched by Mrs. Trollope before the 

 seance began. 



We have dow only to notice the extraordinary 

 appendix of pieces justificatives, which, strange to 

 say, prove nothing, and have hardly any bearing 

 on the main questions at issue. We have, for 

 instance, six pages of extracts on early magic, 

 the flagellants, and the dancing-mania ; followed 

 by four pages about Mesraer ; then an account 

 of Mr. Lewes's experiments before the Medical 

 School, Aberdeen, which failed ; then eight pages 

 on the effects of suggestion on hypnotized patients 

 — effects thoroughly known to every operator, 

 but having no bearing on the case of persons 

 never hypnotized or mesmerized, and to whom no 

 suggestion was made ; after this come ten pages 

 on the planchette, on which no one relies without 

 collateral evidence ; and then an account of some 

 foolish clergymen, who thought they had direct 

 proof of Satanic agency ; then comes Mrs. Cul- 

 ver's statement (called a " deposition before mag- 

 istrates " in the text), to which we have already 

 referred ; then my own letter to the Spectator 

 about Mr. G. H. Lewes's supposed proof of the 

 imposture of Mrs. Hayden ; then the oft-told 

 story of Dr. Carpenter's interviews with Foster, 

 from the Quarterly Review article ; then more of 

 Mr. Braid's " suggestion-and-expectancy " exper- 

 iments — and that is all. Not one solitary piece 

 of careful investigation or unimpeachable evi- 

 dence in these forty-two pages of what are an- 

 nounced as pieces justificatives ! 



Let us now summarize briefly the results of 

 our examination of Dr. Carpenter's book. We 

 have given a few examples of how he has mis- 

 represented the opinions of those opposed to his 



theories. Although he professes to treat the sub- 

 ject historically, we have shown how every parti- 

 cle of evidence is ignored which is too powerful 

 to be explained away. As examples of this we 

 have referred, in more or less detail, to the de- 

 nial by high authorities of the reality of painless 

 surgical operation during the mesmeric sleep ; to 

 the " Report of the Academie Royale de Medc- 

 cine," supporting the reality of clairvoyance and 

 the other higher phenomena of mesmerism ; to 

 experiments on clairvoyance before French medi- 

 cal skeptics ; to the evidence of educated and 

 scientific men in Vienna, as to the truth of Rei- 

 chenbach's observations ; to the personal evi- 

 dence of Robert Houdin, Prof. Gregory, Dr. 

 Mayo, Dr. Haddock, Dr. Lee, Dr. Ashburner, Dr. 

 Rostan, Dr. Teste, and Dr. Esdaile, as to tests 

 demonstrating the reality of clairvoyance ; to the 

 evidence of the Dialectical Committee, of Dr. 

 Lockhart Robertson, Sergeant Cox, Mr. Crookes, 

 and myself, as to motion of solid bodies demon- 

 strably not caused by muscular action ; to the 

 evidence of the Dialectical Committee, of the 

 Hon. Robert Dale Owen, Mr. Crookes, t.nd Prof. 

 Barrett, as to raps demonstrably not caused by 

 the muscles or tendons of the medium ; to the 

 evidence of Mr. T. A. Trollope and myself as to 

 the production of flowers, demonstrably not 

 brought by the medium — all of which evidence, 

 and everything analogous to it, is totally ignored 

 by Dr. Carpenter. Again, this work, professing 

 to be " scientific," and therefore accurate as to 

 facts and precise as to references, has been 

 shown to be full of misstatements and misrepre- 

 sentations. As examples, we have the statement 

 that there is no evidence of the mesmerizer's 

 power to act on a patient unconscious of his 

 wish to do so, whereas I have shown that there 

 is good medical evidence of this power; that 

 Reichenbach did not submit his subjects to tests, 

 whereas I have quoted many admirable tests, as 

 well as the independent test-observations of Dr. 

 Charpignon ; that Putter's rnagnenometer never 

 acted when the operator did not know the sub- 

 stance influencing it, whereas Mr. Rutter states 

 clearly and positively that it did ; that the Royal 

 Academy of Medicine first investigated clairvoy- 

 ance in 1837 and declared it not proved, whereas 

 they first investigated it in 1825, and reported 

 favorably; that Prof. Gregory was credulous, 

 and took no precautions against imposture, which 

 I have shown to be not the fact. Again we 

 have numerous errors and misstatements (always 

 against the mediums) in the accounts of the 

 Misses Fox and Mrs. Culver, of the alleged 



