470 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In all these methods the operator is usually blindfolded, so that 

 he may get no assistance from any other source than the unconscious 

 muscular action of the subject. 



The movements of the operator in these experiments may be 

 either very slow, cautious, and deliberate, or rapid and reckless. 

 Brown, in his public exhibitions, was very careful about getting the 

 physical connection right, and then moved off very rapidly, sometimes 

 in the right direction, sometimes in the wrong one, but frequently 

 with such speed as to inconvenience the subject on whom he was 

 operating. These rapid movements give greater brilliancy to public 

 experiments and serve to entrance audiences, but they are not essen- 

 tial to success. They serve, no doubt, in many cases, to bewilder or 

 partially entrance the subject, and thus to render him far more likely 

 to be unconscious of his own muscular tension and relaxation 

 through which the operator is guided. 



The power of muscle-reading depends mainly, if not entirely, on 

 some phase of the sense of touch. Dr. Hanbury Smith tells me that 

 a certain maker of lancets in London had acquired great reputation 

 for the superiority of his workmanship. Suddenly, there was a falling 

 off in the character of the instrument that he sent out, and it was 

 found that his wife, on whom he had depended to test the sharpness 

 of the edo;e on her finder or thumb, had recentlv died. 



That the blind acquire great delicacy of touch has long been 

 known ; Laura Bridgman is a familiar illustration. Dr. Carpenter 

 states (although there are always elements of error through the 

 unconscious assistance of other senses in cases of this kind) that Miss 

 Bridgman recognized his brother, whom she had not met for a year, 

 by the touch of the hand alone. 



Every physician recognizes the fact of this difference of suscepti- 

 bility to touch; and, in the diagnosis of certain conditions of disease, 

 much depends on the tactas eruclitus. I am not sure whether this 

 delicacy of perception, by which muscle-reading is accomplished, is 

 the ordinary sense of touch, that of contact, or of some of the special 

 modifications of this sense. It is to physiologists and students of 

 diseases of the neiwous system a well-known fact that there are 

 several varieties of sensibility to touch, to temperature, to pressure 

 or weight, and to pain which, possibly, represent different rates or 

 modes of vibration of the nerve-force. 



The proportion of persons who can succeed in muscle-reading, by 

 the methods here described, is likewise a natural subject of inquiry. 

 Judging from the fact that, out of the comparatively few who have 

 made any efforts in this direction, a large number have succeeded 

 after very little practice, and some few, who have given the matter 

 close attention, have acquired great proficiency, it is probable that 

 the majority of people of either sex, between the ages of fifteen and 

 fifty, could attain, if they chose to labor for it, under suitable 



