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Notices of Books . 
401 
more I reflect upon them the more impossible do I find it to 
class them among the tricks which are the objeCt of my art.” 
The two letters of Robert Houdin were published at the time 
(May, 1847) in “ Le Siecle,” and have since appeared in many 
works, among others in Dr. Lee’s “ Animal Magnetism ” (pp. 
163 and 231). 
One of the supposed exposures made much of by Dr. Carpenter 
is that of Dr. Hewes’s “Jack,” which is suggestive as showing 
the complete ignorance of many experimenters thirty years ago 
as to the essential conditions of the manifestation of so delicate 
and abnormal a faculty as clairvoyance, ignorance shared in by 
believers and sceptics alike. According to Dr. Carpenter (whose 
account he informs me is taken from an article by Dr. Noble 
in the “British and Foreign Medical Review” of April, 1845), 
Jack’s eyes were “ bound down by surgeons with strips of ad- 
hesive plaster, over which were folds of leather, again kept in 
place by other plasters.” Jack then read off, without the least 
hesitation , everything that was presented to him. But a young 
Manchester surgeon had his eyes done up in the same manner, 
and, by working the muscles of his face till he had loosened the 
plasters , was enabled to read by looking upwards. The conclu- 
sion was immediately jumped at that this was the way Jack did 
it, although no working of the muscles of the face had been 
observed, and no looking upwards described. Instead, however, 
of repeating the experiment under the same conditions, but more 
watchfully, it was proposed that the entire eyes should he covered 
up with a thick coating of shoemakers' wax ! The boy objected 
and resisted, and it was put on by force ; and then, the clair- 
voyant powers being annihilated, as might have been anticipated, 
there was great glorification among the sceptics, and Dr. Carpenter 
indulges himself in a joke, telling us that Jack now “ plainly saw, 
even with his eyes shut, that his little game was up.” To 
any one who considers this case, even as related by Dr. Carpen- 
ter, it will be evident that the boy was a genuine clairvoyant. 
Adhesive plaster properly applied by a medical man on a passive 
subject, is not to be loosened by imperceptible working of the 
muscles, and it is too great a demand upon our credulity to ask 
us to believe that this occurred undetected by the acute medical 
sceptics watching the whole procedure. We have, however, 
fortunately, another case to refer to, in which this very test was 
carried out to its proper conclusion by examining the state of the 
plaster after the clairvoyance , when the alleged looseness could 
be instantly detected. A clairvoyant boy at Plymouth was sub- 
mitted to the examination of a sceptical committee, who appear 
to have done their work very thoroughly. First his eyes were 
examined, and it was found that the balls were so turned up that 
even were the eyelids a little apart, ordinary vision was impos- 
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