THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
JUNE, 1883. 
I. REICHENBACH AND THE PSYCHICAL 
RESEARCH SOCIETY. 
f EARLY forty years ago the scientific world and the 
more intelligent classes in general were startled by 
an announcement in Liebig’s “ Annalen.” Baron 
von Reichenbach, who, though not a chemist of the highest 
order, was still favourably known as an experimentalist, had 
observed luminous appearances over the poles of powerful 
magnets, at the ends of the axes of certain crystals, and 
upon a number of other bodies. These phenomena Reich- 
enbach ascribed to a yet undiscovered form of energy, to 
which he gave the name of Od. At once not a few enquirers 
attempted to verify the author’s results, but in general with 
but indifferent success. The misfortune was that, on 
Reichenbach’s own admission, these lights were not visible 
to all mankind, but only to a minority, whose sight was 
abnormally delicate. The very name which had been se- 
lected was, for England at least, very unfortunate. The 
majority of our countrymen would persist in pronouncing it 
as if written odd , and thus affording scope for petty joking. 
Others made matters worse by tacking a classical tailpiece 
to Reichenbach’s Teutonic monosyllable, converting it into 
odyle. Thus the idea was insinuated that the unknown 
something was not a phase of energy, but a material organic 
compound, analogous to ethyle, methyle, propyle, &c. Be- 
fore very long od was dropped. The physicists ceased to 
experiment for, on, or with it, and, despite the august spon- 
sorship of Liebig, it was handed over to that semi-scientilic 
limbo where exploded delusions await decomposition and 
vol. v. (third series. Y 
