Notices of Books. 
413 
1877.] 
persons never hypnotised or mesmerised, and to whom no sug- 
gestion was made ; after this comes ten pages on the planchette, 
on which no one relies without collateral evidence ; and then an 
account of some foolish clergymen, who thought they had direcfl 
proof of Satanic agency; then comes Mrs. Culver’s statement 
(called a “ deposition before magistrates ” in the text), to which 
we have already referred ; then my own letter to the “ Spectator ” 
about Mr. G. H. Lewes’s supposed proof of the imposture of 
Mrs. Hayden ; then the oft-told story of Dr. Carpenter’s inter- 
views with Foster, from the “Quarterly Review” article; then 
more of Mr. Braid’s “ suggestion and expectancy ” experiments, 
— and that is all ! Not one solitary piece of careful investigation 
or unimpeachable evidence in these forty-two pages of what 
are announced as pieces justijicatives ! 
Let us now summarise briefly the results of our examin- 
ation of Dr. Carpenter’s book. We have given a few examples 
of how he has misrepresented the opinions of those op- 
posed to his theories. Although he professes to treat the sub- 
ject historically, we have shown how every particle of evidence 
is ignored which is too powerful to be explained away. As exam- 
ples of this we have referred, in more or less detail, to the denial 
by high authorities of the reality of painless surgical operation 
during the mesmeric sleep ; to the “ Report of the Royal 
Academie de Medecine,” supporting the reality of clairvoyance 
and the other higher phenomena of mesmerism ; to experiments 
on clairvoyance, before French medical sceptics ; to the evidence 
of educated and scientific men in Vienna as to the truth of Rei- 
chenbach’s observations : to the personal evidence of Robert 
Houdin, Professor Gregory, Dr. Mayo, Dr. Haddock, Dr. Lee, 
Dr. Ashburner, Dr. Rostan, Dr. Teste, and Dr. Esdaile, as to 
tests demonstrating the reality of clairvoyance ; to the evidence 
of the Dialectical Committee, of Dr. Lockhart Robertson, 
Serjeant Cox, Mr. Crookes, and myself, as to motion of solid 
bodies demonstrably not caused by muscular action ; to the evi- 
dence of the DialeCtical Committee, of the Hon. Robert Dale 
Owen, Mr. Crookes, and Professor Barrett, as to raps demon- 
strably not caused by the muscles or tendons of the medium ; to 
the evidence of Mr. T. A. Trollope and myself as to the pro- 
duction of flowers, demonstrably not brought by the medium, — 
all of which evidence, and everything analogous to it, is totally 
ignored by Dr. Carpenter. Again, this work, professing to be 
“scientific,” and therefore accurate as to faCts and precise as to 
references, has been shown to be full of misstatements and mis- 
representations. As examples we have — -the statement that 
there is no evidence of the mesmeriser’s power to aCt on a patient 
unconscious of his wish to do so, whereas I have shown that 
there is good medical evidence of this power; that Reichenbach 
did not submit his subjects to tests, whereas I have quoted 
many admirable tests, as well as the independent test-observa- 
