460 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a new revelation to physiologists as well as to the scientific world in 

 general. 



The method of mind-reading introduced by Brown, which is but 

 one of many methods that have been or may be used, is as follows : 



The operator, usually blindfolded, firmly applies the back of the 

 hand of the subject to be operated on against his own forehead, and 

 with his other hand presses lightly upon the palm and fingers of the 

 subject's hand. In this position he can detect, if sufficiently expert, the 

 slightest movement, impulse, tremor, tension, or relaxation, in the arm 

 of the subject. He then requests the subject to concentrate his mind 

 on some locality in the room, or on some hidden object, or on some one 

 of the letters of the alphabet suspended along the wall. The operator, 

 blindfolded, marches sometimes very rapidly with the subject up and 

 down the room or rooms, up and down stairways, or out-of-doors 

 through the streets, and, when he comes near the locality on which 

 the subject is concentrating his mind, a slight impulse or movement 

 is communicated to his hand by the hand of the subject. This impulse 

 is both involuntary and unconscious on the part of the subject. He 

 is not aware, and is unwilling, at first, to believe, that he gives any 

 such impulse; and yet it is sufficient to .indicate to the expert and 

 practised operator that he has arrived near the hidden object, and 

 then, by a close study and careful trials in different directions, up- 

 ward, downward, and at various points of the compass, he ascertains 

 precisely the locality, and is, in many cases, as confident as though 

 he had received verbal communication from the subject. Even though 

 the article on which the subject concentrates his mind be very small, 

 it can quite frequently be picked out from a large number, provided 

 the subject be a good one, and the operator sufficiently skillful. The 

 article is sometimes found at once, with scarcely any searching, the 

 operator going to it directly, without hesitation, and with a celerity 

 and precision that, at first sight, and until the physiological explana- 

 tion is understood, justly astonish even the most thoughtful and skep- 

 tical. 1 These experiments, it should be added, are performed in public 

 or private, and on subjects of unquestioned integrity, in the presence 

 of experts, and under a combination of circumstances and conditions 

 for the elimination of sources of error that make it necessary to rule 

 out at once the possibility of collusion. 



The alternative is, therefore, between the actual transfer of thought 

 from subject to operator, as has been claimed, and the theory of un- 

 conscious muscular motion and relaxation on the part of the subject, 

 the truth of which I have demonstrated by numerous experiments. 



One of the gentlemen with whom I have experimented, Judge 

 Blydenberg, who began to test his powers directly after I first called 



1 la New Haven I saw Brown, before a large audience, march off rapidly through the 

 aisle and find at once the person on whom the subject was concentrating his mind, 

 although there was the privilege of selecting any one out of a thousand or more present. 



