November 25, 1897] 



NA TURE 



79 



Vienna, October 25. 



The Late Dr. Haughton. 

 In your account of the late Dr. Haughton, as well as in those 

 written of him elsewhere, I see no mention of a somewhat fan- 

 tastic instance of his versatility — namely, his investigation into 

 the most merciful way of hanging criminals. It was, I believe, 

 entirely owing to him that the present method of the " long 

 drop " was introduced. According to the older method the 

 rope was so arranged that the culprit fell barely knee deep, 

 all the rest of his body being in view above the scaffold. 

 He died usually by strangulation, sometimes combined with 

 apoplexy, after what seemed to be a protracted agony Now, 

 he is allowed to fall through some 10 feet, more or less, 

 according to his estimated bulk and weight, and he dies with a 

 broken neck more painlessly than virtuous persons in their own 

 beds. The problem was torfind out the length of drop that 

 would suffice to break the neck bone, but would be insufficient 

 to tear off the head. Dr. Haughton experimented on the tensile 

 strengths of the spine and of the muscles, and he published a for- 

 mula for the length of drop, dependent on the height and weight 

 of the culprit. In this, I thought he had omitted a small factor, 

 and wrote to him about it — namely, the increased sectional area 

 the muscles of the neck in fat men. It should be mentioned 

 that a case actually occurred in which the drop was too deep, 

 and the head of the criminal became wholly detached, and the 

 legal doubt arose whether under those circumstances the sentence 

 of being "hanged by the neck" had been duly carried out. I 

 regret much that I have to write wholly from memory now, 

 which I trust has not deceived me. It is very possible that Dr. 

 Haughton's formula may be found in one of the earlier numbers 

 of Nature. F. G. 



The Supposed Dowsing Faculty. 

 Permit me to guard your readers against a misapprehension 

 likely to be caused by the review in Nature of October 14, of 

 an investigation I have recently published on the alleged exist- 



NO. 1465. VOL. 57] 



LUDWIG BOLTZMANN, 



ence of a faculty for finding underground water, a power claimed 

 by certain persons called " diviners " or " dowsers." 



The reviewer states twice over that the " bulk of the paper is 

 taken up with hearsay evidence," and again that it is " an ac- 

 cumulation of second-hand evidence," and that I do not give 

 " enough weight to the natural tendency of mankind to conceal 

 their failures." If these statements could be justified I should 

 agree with your reviewer that my investigation *' leaves the 

 subject in the same state as it found it." But the peculiar 

 meaning your reviewer attaches to the words he employs, and 

 hence the value of his opinion, may be inferred from the 

 following facts : — 



Six years ago I was asked by the Council of the Society for 

 Psychical Research to examine this question. I had, therefore, 

 in addition to experiments which I myself conducted, to take 

 the place of a judge in a court of inquiry, and give weight 

 to no evidence but that of eye-witnesses ; and so, in almost 

 every one of the 152 numbered cases pro and con that are 

 given in my paper, I quote such written and signed evidence, 

 independent of the dowser himself. These witnesses are 

 mostly men of good position, or wide experience, and to whom 

 the question of obtaining water was a matter of practical 

 importance and pecuniary outlay. The argument that some of 

 them were biassed is a perfectly fair criticism, if true, but the 

 bias was usually more on the side of incredulity than of 

 credulity ; take, e.g. the extreme scepticism of Mr. Richardson, 

 the employer in the remarkable Waterford case, and of Sir 

 Henry Harben in that at Warnham.^ No evidential value is 



1 It may well be urged that a man would not employ a dowser unless 

 he were already biassed in his favour. But the gentlemen named above, 

 and several other witnesses I have cited, consented to this course, 

 either to gratify their friends, or as a dernier ressort, only after scientific 

 advice and large expenditure on boring had failed to find the water supply 

 they needed. Their attitude towards the dowser when he arrived was that 

 of lU-disguised contempt. How far "lucky hits" or "mother wit" can 

 explain the dowser's success in these and other cases, the reader of my 

 paper must judge for himself. 



