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Notices of Books. 
3 99 
be found capable of reading through opaque substances.” The 
result was negative. No clairvoyant succeeded under the con- 
ditions imposed. The reader unaccustomed to Dr. Carpenter’s 
historical method would naturally suppose this statement to be 
corredf, and that clairvoyance was first carefully sifted in France 
after 1837, though he might well doubt, if offering a prize for 
reading under rigid conditions was an adequate means of sifting 
a faculty so eminently variable, uncertain, and delicate as clair- 
voyance is admitted to be. What, then, will be his astonishment to 
find that this same “ Academie Royal de Medicine ” had appointed 
a commission of eleven members in 1826, who inquired into the 
whole subjedt of mesmerism for five years , and in 1831 reported 
in full, and in favour of the reality of almost all the alleged 
phenomena, including clairvoyance. Of the eleven members, 
nine attended the meetings and experiments, and all nine signed 
the report, which was therefore unanimous. This report, being 
full and elaborate, and the result of personal examination and 
experiment by medical men — the very “ trained and sceptical 
experts,” who are maintained by Dr. Carpenter to be the only 
adequate judges — is wholly ignored by him. In this report we 
find among the conclusions — “ 24. We have seen two sonnam- 
bulists distinguish with their eyes shut objects placed before 
them : name cards, read books, writing, &c. This phenomenon 
took place even when the opening of the eyelids was accurately 
closed by means of the fingers.”* Is it not strange that the 
“ historian ” of mesmerism, &c., should be totally ignorant of the 
existence of this report, which is referred to in almost every work 
on the subjeCl ? Yet he must be thus ignorant or he could never 
say, as he does in the very same page quoted above (p. 71), 
“ that in every instance (so far as I am aware) in which a 
thorough investigation has been made into those ‘ higher pheno- 
mena ’ of mesmerism, the supposed proof has completely failed.” 
It cannot be said that investigation by nine medical men carried 
on for five years with every means of observation and experi- 
ment, and elaborately reported on, was not “ thorough,” whence it 
follows that Dr. Carpenter must be ignorant of it, and our 
readers can draw their own inference as to the value of his 
opinion, and the dependence to be placed on his scientific and 
and historical treatment of this subjeCL 
More than twenty-five pages of the book are occupied with 
more or less detailed accounts of the failures and alleged ex- 
posures of clairvoyants, while not a single case is given of a 
clairvoyant having stood the test of rigid examination by a com- 
mittee, or by medical or other experts, and the implication is 
that none such are to be found. But every enquirer knows that 
clairvoyance is a most delicate and uncertain phenomenon, never 
to be certainly calculated on, and this is repeatedly stated in the 
* Archives Generales de Medecine, vol. xx. ; also in Lee’s Animal Magne- 
tism, pp. 13 to 29. 
