212 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



assistant. Where they did not know they tried to guess, and with 

 ludicrous results. Habitually they produced results exactly oppo- 

 site to those which should have occurred, had the magnetic cur- 

 rent had any influence whatever as a causal agent. I will now go 

 further, and will affirm that there never was, any more than there 

 now is, the slightest ground for believing that the most powerful 

 magnets are capable of exercising any such influence as Dr. Luys 

 and others are in the habit of assuming that they can exert over 

 the animal organism. Opportunely enough, I find in the New 

 York Medical Journal of the 31st of December a report of the ex- 

 periments made by F. Peterson and A. E. Kennelly, with the most 

 powerful magnets in the Edison laboratory, of which Mr. Ken- 

 nelly is the chief electrician. Very powerful electro-magnets of 

 2,000 to 5,000 C. G. S. units to the square centimetre were em- 

 ployed. Not only was no visible effect produced in the polariza- 

 tion within the magnetic field of the haemoglobin of blood, or in 

 the circulation in the web of the frog's foot, but when a dog was 

 placed for five hours under the influence of a magnetic field with 

 an intensity of from 1,000 to 2,000 C. G. S. units to the square cen- 

 timetre the dog was in no way affected and was very lively when 

 liberated. A photograph is given of a boy sitting in a cylinder 

 two feet in diameter and seven inches deep, upon which a set of 

 field magnets converged : he was in no way affected. The next 

 experiments were made by introducing the head into the field of 

 a very powerful electro-magnet (2,000 C. G. S. units). The current 

 could be turned on or off the coils of the electro-magnet without 

 the knowledge of the subject. No effect on consciousness, sensa- 

 tion, circulation, respiration, or tendon reflex could be perceived. 

 The subject was quite unable to say when the current was turned 

 on or off. The last series of experiments were made with an elec- 

 tro-magnet in which the current was reversed two hundred and 

 eighty times a second. No effect whatever was perceived when 

 the head was introduced within the magnetic field of this potent 

 instrument. The authors conclude that the human organism is 

 in no wise appreciably affected by the most powerful magnets 

 known to modern science ; that neither direct nor reversed mag- 

 netism exerts any perceptible influence upon the iron contained in 

 the blood, upon the circulation, upon ciliary or protoplasmic move- 

 ments, upon sensory or motor nerves, or upon the brain. The 

 authors further observe that they find it difficult to understand 

 why magnetism appears to have no influence whatever upon the 

 human organism. The experiments of like kind recorded by Sir 

 William Thomson and in Pfliiger's Archiv gave equally negative 

 results. 



The complete exposure which the results of my experiments 

 effected of the valuelessness of the so-called magnetic effects on 



