147. WE have now seen the force we are investigating produced from ten different but always particular sources; we will now seek a more universal occurrence of it,—we will look for it in the whole material world, and seek to make out something of the great part which it plays in the wide totality of things.
175. Every one is aware that many persons exist on whom particular substances exert a peculiar, usually disagreeable effect, which often seems to border on the ridiculous. I will not speak here of the strange things to which instinct urges pregnant woman. But when we find people who cannot bear to touch skins, others who cannot bear to see feathers,—nay, such as cannot endure the sight of butter, &c., this may be regarded simply as a result of defective education; but experience shows that definite antipathies of this kind recur in exactly the same form, and against the same objects, in different persons, and in the most distant countries. This proves that they are by no means always outbreaks of a want of good breeding, but that some equally definite cause, be it of objective or subjective nature, must often lie at the bottom, and that when it occurs it must not be chidingly reproved, but frequently deserves that its origin should be investigated and taken into account.
More accurate observation shows that these strange antipathies, often expressed in a very active manner, present themselves most frequently in those persons who, to outward appearance healthy, are more or less sensitive, and that the degree of their strength and variety increases in proportion as the persons are more diseased, and subject to nervous complaints, spasms, and similar affections. This is so much the case in Miss Sturmann, for example, that sometimes she cannot take hold of a key or bolt of a door, without her fingers being seized with cramps; while, at the same time, she nevertheless walks about the house, garden, or even in the streets, like a healthy person.
In the course of my numerous investigations on highly sensitive persons, I soon became aware that these antipathies had some points in common, that some agreement was to be found, the further tracing and comparison of which could not but afford hope of discovering some relation of cause and effect in the phenomena, and thus possibly supplying the means of penetrating the common, deeper-lying natural cause. I found that certain definite sensations always returned, and that when the feelings of the patients were clearly made out and distinguished by similar names, their apparent multiplicity might be traced back to a few which were continually recurring. And these few I soon found to obey settled rules. They consisted of feelings of apparent heat or cold received from various substances of exactly equal temperature; of more or less decidedly pleasant or disagreeable character, increasing so far as to the production of convulsions, of sensations of pricking, throbbing, or drawing, affecting the skin and extremities, and of painless tonic spasms. In the second of these treatises, where I have explained the character of the force of crystals, I have already pointed out that in the case of Miss Nowotny, the last phenomena, the painless tonic spasms, were produced by the emanations of the poles of the axes of crystallized bodies, and that the capacity for producing this effect was imparted in different degrees of strength to different bodies, but was never wanting in those which are capable of forming free crystals, whether they consist of a simple or any ever so greatly compound substance. This kind of sensation has, therefore, been to a certain extent discussed, and for the present settled: there only remain to be examined, therefore, the sensations of apparent difference of temperature, those of unpleasantness, and the seeming mechanical agitations, of the pricking, &c.: and we will here apply the test to some of them.
Some of these sensations extend to the healthy, but the highly sensitive experience them more strongly or weakly, according to the nature of the disease, and to the standard of exaltation of their sufferings. I was led to the first investigation in this direction by the recognition, in Miss Nowotny, that all amorphous bodies, which are devoid of the peculiar efficacy of crystallized, had nevertheless a reactionary influence of a disagreeable kind, as well as sometimes an additional one of heat or cold,—that this was attached, with a certain constancy, to particular substances, and possessed different degrees of strength in different substances; while, in the former case, the crystallic force seemed to proceed from the kind of condition of aggregation: here something dynamical, of a different kind, showed itself in the matter itself: form and substance, therefore, exhibited a strongly marked difference in their power of affecting external things.
176. As it was evident that something lay hidden here, which must possess either physiological or physical interest, I undertook the no small labour of testing the sensation of discomfort of the patients, with more than 600 substances; namely, the greater portion of my collection of chemical preparations. It was found that there were in these very clearly marked gradations, and that the patient was able to distinguish these gradations with such delicacy, that she was able to assign to every substance its place between two others. This she could do with such certainty, that when I gave her again on the third or fourth day the substances which she had previously arranged in series, she again placed
them in exactly the same places in the arrangement, as she hadgiventhem in the first instance; while it is clear here that she could neither recognise or understand anything in this numerous collection of white and coloured powders. She had an equal degree of clearness in her feeling, to anything that we meet with in the vision, for the distinction of tints of colour, or with the ear, for the distinction of harmonious ordiscordant tones. When we recollect that, in Miss Nowotny, this feeling had received none of that practice by which the sight, the hearing, and other senses gradually acquire, with constant exercise, their full development and susceptibility in the course of a long life, and of which we have learned, in the psychological field, the overwhelming influence on the clearness and distinctness of sensual perceptions,— some idea may be formed of the extraordinary inner acuteness with which this peculiar abnormal feeling must be experienced; and by which we shall hereafter clear up much that at present lies in complete obscurity.
177. Scarcely a couple of dozen substances had been brought into a series in this examination, when I already saw a law develope itself: the substances became arranged according to their electro-chemical values, in such a manner that those standing highest came to the top of the list, the indifferent below, and with a striking disregard of their polar opposition. I will not venture to tire the reader with the enumeration of the whole series of more than 600 substances, but still I wish to select a small number:—the highest, i. e. those substances acting most strongly, were: oxygen gas, sulphur, caffeine, sulphuric acid, potassium, phosphorus, sodium, selenium, iodine, cinnabar, lead, and potass. Between the numbers 30 and 100 occurred—bismuth, arsenic, mercury, morphia, zinc, iodide of potassium; tellurium, chloride of calcium, chromium, lithium, oxide of gold, oxide of nickel, tin, iridium, nickel, alcohol, chlorine gas. Between 200 and 400 came—paraffin, rhodium, acroleine, piperine, creasote, common salt, quinine, brucine, cantharadine, strychnine, anhydrous acetic acid. From 600 to 600—cinchonine, quartz,hippuric acid, mastic, chalk, gum, almost all vegetable acids, sugar, sugar of milk, manlike. At the end of the series stood palladium, platinum, silver, copper, iron, gold, amber, and water. These last were almost perfectly indifferent to this sensitive patient. With the small exception of a few rare metals, which very probably were not perfectly pure, all highly polar bodies appeared at one end of the scale, the indifferent at the other; among which iron, with its magnetic capacities, makes the only exception. Strangely enough, she could make out any distinction between the substances of the positive and the negative pole, in spite of my endeavouring at the end to make her aware of important differences in these, and consequently directing her attention particularly to this. Oxygen gas, sulphur, phosphorus, stood co-ordinated with potassium, sodium, lead, &c.
178. This task, which occupied a whole week, was performed with the patient in a perfectly clear state of consciousness. I now sought to control it by examinations during her unconscious cataleptic condition. Whenever I laid any body in her motionless hand, it reacted upon her; the indifferent, when not crystallized, left her tolerably quiet; substances occurring nearer to the middle of the series made the hand restless; those bodies past the middle produced trembling and abnormal twitchings in the hand; and when I placed in her hand the highest substances, such as sulphur, caffeine, lead ore, iodine, cinnabar, or even the higher standing minerals, like heavy spar, fluor spar, pyrites, or selenite, the whole arm was seized with such violent cramps that it rose up quite mechanically—just like a frog's thigh through which a galvanic current passes, and flung far away the body held in the hand, and then, in the cataleptic manner, remained outstretched in this unnatural position. These counter-tests prove that the unknown effect of these substances is exactly the same in catalepsy, in their relation to each other,and qualitatively in general, as in the awake condition, but that quantitatively the strength of the action is considerably exalted. What she only experienced as very disagreeable when awake, produced violent spasms in the cataleptic condition. When she recovered, after some time, from these conditions, and regained her consciousness, she invariably complained of pain and deadness in one arm: this was always that one with which the experiment had been tried, of which she knew nothing, and of which she was not informed. The spasms were, therefore, connected with violent excitement and tension, which left behind a state of exhaustion. From all this we have to set it down, that all solid bodies, in contact with this sensitive person, produced reactions upon the feelings of a peculiar kind, differing in a graduated series according to their different chemical composition.
179. In the course of these matters, I often made the striking observation, that certain of these bodies began to act, to set the hand in motion, before I had actually dropped them into it, and while I still held them over it. Devoting some attention to this phenomenon, I found that many substances only required to be laid upon the bed at a little distance from the band, in order to produce reaction upon the patient. Of this kind were sulphur, lead ore, fluor spar, rock salt, cinnabar, grain tin, selenite, arsenic, sal-ammoniac, prussiate of potash, antimony, telluric acid, wolfram, apatite, celestine, white lead ore, cyanide of potassium, sulpho-cyanide of potassium, orpiment. The hand lying near these began to tremble; this soon increased, and very often became so violent that it approached towards the substance, then dashed this away or became fixed in a tonic spasm. Here, therefore, was distinctly manifested action at a distance, even of amorphous bodies, providing only that they were of high electro-chemical rank.
180. To try how these reagents would act upon the sensitive, while conscious and out of the catalepsy, I made the same experiments the next morning, at the hours in which she usually was in the greatest degree of suffering. All the above substances were brought near her hand, but made no impression on her, even none whatever after repeated trials. She herself covered her closed eyes, to be quite sure whether she did not feel anything when those substances were brought as close as possible to the hand, which had produced contractions and cramps the evening before; but it was in vain: not until actual contact took place did those very disagreeable sensations begin which I have described above. Catalepsy itself is therefore a condition which exalts in a disproportionate degree the sensitiveness of the patient to certain unknown qualities of matter, and matter possesses some hidden quality, by means of which it affects the cataleptic peculiarly in an exalted degree, even at a distance, in a manner analogous to that in which it affects patients in the awakened condition, free from the catalepsy, by actual contact.
181. These observations soon received wider development in Miss Maix. Most of the substances which I placed in her hand affected her as warm or cold, as I have already mentioned; but together with this feeling, which she only received at the touching surface by actual contact, another very frequently presented itself, and this was a simultaneous cooling, like that cool wind which was diffused from many of the bodies I tried (resembling that from the positively electric touch to healthy persons). Sulphur was one of the first of these bodies. When I laid a little piece in her hand, she felt both warmth at the point of contact and a coolness which spread itself all over the hand like a gentle, cool
breeze. This soon increased, extended from the band up over the whole arm, the face, became perceptible in the other hand, and also seized that arm; then it penetrated through the dress, and was felt on the breast; at last it flowed, through the coverlet, all over the lower parts of the body, and at length even the feet felt the cool emanation which proceeded from the sulphur.
182. I laid the sulphur in an open drinking-glass with a thin bottom, and placed this in the hand of the sensitive. She thus grasped the sulphur without touching it, and was at the same time, at all events in my expectation, cut off from its direct radiation. The drinking-glass, when previously tested, had felt warm, without any emanation. As soon as the sulphur was placed in it, the point of contact of the glass and the hand remained warm, as before, but a cool wind now issued from the glass, on all sides, diffusing itself over the hand. It flowed from all parts of the bottom of the glass which were not in contact with the hand, it seemed to sink down from the sides, and to flow over from the mouth of the glass, thus streaming down upon the hand. This cooling influence, which appeared to penetrate through the glass, was, however, much more agreeable than that coming immediately from the bare sulphur; finer, as if more transparent, the patient said,—purer, and more etherial. It soon penetrated the whole hand, made it cold, then stiff, and persisted for a considerable time after I had taken the glass away. It had at the same time been felt on the face, the other hand, and the neighbouring parts. A piece of selenite, substituted for the sulphur, produced exactly the same effects.
183. When I had removed the sulphur from the glass, and laid it, for the moment, on a tube standing by the bed, in order to perform another experiment, Miss Maix very soon said to me that she could still trace thence the presence of the piece of sulphur. I then removed it to a greater distance, about a yard away; she still perceived its presence. Even at the distance of two yards, she could detect traces of the coolness from a piece of sulphur not larger than one's finger. I now prepared a surface of sulphur, measuring half a square foot, in this way: 1 sent for six of the sticks of sulphur which are used for branding wine-casks, and fastened them, side by side, upon a board. With this improvised apparatus, held opposite to the patient, I could remove, step by step, the whole length of the room, nearly eight yards, and the observer still felt—weakly, it is true, but dia, tinctly—the so-called cool wind flowing on to her from the surface of the sulphur. At this distance she found the sensation to agree exactly with that which was produced on her by the point of a large rock crystal or small open magnet. The effect of the last two was somewhat stronger, but tolerably similar in its kind.
184. The sulphur produced a sensation of warmth, both in the immediate contact and when glass was interposed: I therefore sought for some other substance which appeared cold. Concentrated sulphuric acid was one. When given to her in a glass, she felt great cold at the point of contact; but when it was removed, she felt the cold air from the acid at a distance of several paces. Nitric acid was also cold in contact: its action at a distance extended half as far again as that of an equal quantity of sulphuric acid.
185. I had still to seek out some body which was neither warm nor cold, but indifferent, when lying bare upon the hand. I found such in paraffine and cane sugar. Cold wind nevertheless issued from both; from the paraffine to two yards distance, from the cane sugar about one yard.
186. I now went through a quantity of the most different substances with the patient, to collect confirmations and extensions of this phenomenon. A flask of oxygen gas was felt hot, especially when waved about; it soon made the hand and arm stiff and cramped, was in the highest degree disagreeable, and spread a cool wind to the distance of half a yard. A so extremely small quantity of a concentrated substance, in which we yet in part constantly live, had here, as with Miss Nowotny, such a strongly-marked action ! I possessed a portion of chromic acid in a glass tube about three quarters of an inch thick, sealed up at both ends. She found it burning hot through the hermetically closed glass, but diffusing cool wind to a distance of several yards. Phosphorus in water like sulphur, only weaker, cooling at three yards. Selenium almost like sulphur, radiating coolness to six yards from some small fragments. Tellurium behaved very like sulphur, but gave a cold wind the whole length of the room. Charcoal had the same properties in disproportionately weaker degree. An empty drinking-glass felt warm to the hand, without any wind. When covered with a watch-glass, however, a cool breath flowed down from the glass over the hand; when the watch-glass was removed, the cooling again ceased. It was therefore the enclosed air which produced the cold to the hand. I modified this experiment in various ways, but it always yielded the same result. The oxygen of the air somewhat warmed, when at rest, by the hand, here acquired some little excess of free force over the outer cold and moving air; and since the oxygen always acted strongly here—nay, is -even far the most active of all bodies, the very slight elevation of temperature, the effect of which we have already become acquainted with (§ 177), was sufficient to produce a perceptible manifestation.
187. Almost all the metals felt warm by direct contact, but at the same time all diffused emanations of what the patient called cold wind. They follow one another, in the order of decreasing strength, about in this manner: chromium, osmium, nickel, iridium, leRd, tin, cadmium, zinc, titanium, mercury, palladium, copper, silver, gold, iron, platinum. A plate of copper of about half a square yard surface, placed near the bed of the patient and opposite to her, produced a lively, cool, fresh wind, which gradually appeared to flow very agreeably through the whole of the bed. A zinc plate of equal size produced the same effect less strongly. Still weaker was the action of a lead and an iron plate. But when I placed before her a quicksilvered mirror, at first with metal coat next her, this worked very strongly upon the observer; the glass side of the mirror, however, acted still more strongly, the emanations from this being again that fine, altogether agreeable coolness, which we became acquainted with above (5 182), when the effects of sulphur and selenite were conveyed through glass; the patient felt herself imbued with the agreeable feelings from head to foot.
188. I instituted less extensive experiments with Miss Sturmann, but the few were decided enough to afford positive confirmation. Oxygen gas was found very hot in contact; sulphur, selenium, iodine, bismuth, chloride of gold, iridium, oxide of gold, and morphia, were all found warm in contact with the hand; antimony, mercury, zinc, copper, tellurium, lunar caustic, bismuth, gold, lead, tin, and iron, appeared cold in their different gradations. Potass gave an uncertain result. Crystals of calcareous spar, double spar, arragonite, tourmaline, and rock crystal, were polar, warm at one end and cool at the other. I tested with her surfaces of half a square foot of sulphur, lead, zinc, copper, silver, and gold; and all these substances she found to radiate either hot, warm, tepid, or cool emanations, at distances of a yard and more. Palladium diffused a fine cool wind, which issued from it on all sides. When I went to her during attacks of catalepsy, and placed in her hand sulphur, selenium, tellurium, mercury in a glass, antimony, or zinc, she struck out, as Miss Nowotny had done under similar circumstances, (4 178), and threw the objects away. But when I laid them near her hand, without touching it, this began to tremble and shake, and gradually became contracted, and in some degree cramped; thus exactly as in Miss Nowotny, § 179.
189. Miss Atzmannsdorfer found a cold feeling from sulphur, selenium, pyrites, antimony, zinc, lead, Egyptian jasper, common salt, alum, potash, and brucine; on the other hand, platinum, silver, iron-bar, copper, gold, and mercury, warm. A cool wind was diffused to her from some distance by selenite, fluor spar, pyrites, alum, tellurium, lead, common granite, and gallic acid. The wind seemed to her to flow out from all sides of the objects.
190. Mr. Schuh found fragments of sulphur and powder of it equally warm on contact. Oxygen, iodine, bromine, knpfer-nickel, cyanide of gold, cyanide of potassium, he found warm, and quickly exciting head-ache, which gradually increased to an insupportable degree. He arranged a small number of minerals according to his feeling of the progress from cold to warm, in the following order: pyrites, fluor spar, calcareous spar, iron glance, staurolite, rock crystal, tungsten, Schorl, sandy calcareous spar from Fontainebleau, heavy spar, topaz, common salt, analcim, and felspar. On sulphate of copper and carbonate of soda, he found points from which coolness seemed to issue. To guard himself from any possible delusion he had them wrapped in paper, and then tried whether he could find the cool places again in these envelopes. When he opened them he was fully satisfied that he had found out exactly the same points again. He felt distinct coolness to issue from sticks of brimstone at a distance of ten inches, as also from a little layer of oxalic acid; on the other hand, warmth flowed to a similar distance from leaves of eight square inches surface of tin, lead, copper, silver, and gold. Silver and gold money also, and steel instruments, were warm to him, when held at some distance above the hand. He could not bear to stay long before a large cheval looking-glass, extending down to the ground; the emanations from it soon affected him with headache, stupefaction, then with pain in the stomach; when he went to the back of the mirror, the disagreeable feelings seized him much more quickly. Two hours later he tried the same before a large mirror attached to a wall; all the same discomfort presented itself still more quickly and strongly.
191. Mr. Studer surrounded with his hollow hand a number of substances, or held them near to his eyes, with which he was far more sensitive than with his hands, since he could well distinguish coolness and warmth. In this way he felt, without contact, coolness from sulphur, pyrites, selenite, tellurium, chloride of calcium, sulphate of oxide of iron, sulphuret of potassium, oxalate of potass, Seignette's salt, rock crystal, and sugar; warmth at a distance from gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, zinc, potassium, and solution of potass.
The joiner Klaiber felt sulphur, sulphuric acid, selenite, rock crystal, &c., cool at a distance of ten inches; on the other hand, gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, lead, solution of potass, &c., warm.
I led many other persons who visited me to these objects, and made some of them go through them by way of test; in the end I regarded two selected substances as the representatives of all the rest, and of the two principal classes of these, namely, sulphur and gold. I kept by me a surface of each about six inches square. Every one whose hand I placed above these at a distance of about three-quarters of an inch, declared, almost without exception, that the sulphur evolved coolness and the gold warmth. I have permission to name some of these persons. M. Kotschy, the well-known oriental traveller, felt a very marked cold from the sulphur surface, and warmth from the gold leaf. Without knowing anything about it, he complained of a strange pricking which the sulphur produced in his hand, although he did not touch it. Dr. Fenzl, the well-known distinguished botanist, felt the distinction of cold and heat between the two bodies very clearly. Mr. Incledon, an English private teacher in Vienna, not only experienced the same in a very lively manner, but described the pricking which the sulphur gave him as very similar to the sensation when the hand is recovering from what is called being asleep, and gives only isolated, scattered pricks.
192. Up to this point the phenomena exhibit a mass of variations; but among these inconstancies something very constant is seen to exist. The alternation of heat and cold appears inconstant in substances of one kind with different observers. This part of the subject requires a special investigation to clear it up more exactly. I therefore exclude it from the present treatise, keeping it for an early task, and here only lay down the general but constant fact, that all the substances subjected to the trial reacted with apparent differences of temperature upon the sensitive persons, without respect to being cool or warm.
I next succeeded in bringing these phenomena more clearly to light than with any of the former witnesses, with Miss Reichel, and in making them so clear that all that I have said about the other sensitive persons might be passed over, were it not that observations of the kind can, from their nature, only acquire stability by a greater number of repetitions of the most varied kind. Miss Reichel consented to come and pass some time here at my country residence, Castle Reisenberg, near Vienna, and thus gave me an opportunity of carrying out numerous experiments, with the help of physical apparatus, in a much more regular and complete manner, than could be done in strange houses and sick-chambers, often under very inconvenient circumstances.
193. In order to render the following experiments comprehensible, I must give some little account of the localities of my residence, in which they were made. The castle, as it is called, is so built that in front there are two rows of nine rooms, connected with oue another by doors in a straight line. Each of the rows is about fifty-three yards long, and ends at both sides with balconies, each of which are about ten feet broad, giving together a length of twenty feet; so that since the doors to the balconies are in a line with the doors of the rooms, a straight space of nearly sixty yards can be obtained for experiment, in a place where the air is calm. Working with wires which require to be held at some distance, the length of the line may be doubled by means of the other series of rooms; thus giving convenient use of almost 120 yards. I placed Miss Reichel at one end of this line, and began to experiment with her on the extent of the action, at a distance, of the substances. With a small horse-shoe magnet of about two and a half inches length of limb, it was necessary for me to remove more than eight feet from the observer before the action upon her began to decrease. With another horseshoe magnet, eight inches long in the limbs, and about one and a half inch broad, I was obliged to remove to a distance of twenty yards from her. A heavy nine-fold horseshoe, which at that time would support about forty pounds, required me to go thirty-three yards from the observer, therefore to six rooms off. Comparative experiments with a magnetic rod of forty-two inches long, afforded as its distance of action on the patient, for the positive (southward) pole, twenty-six yards; for the negative (northward) pole, twenty yards.
194. In the next place I wished to examine the iron rods which served, in a wooden case, as a parallelogram-Indic armature to the last-mentioned magnet. One of these was quite like the magnetic rod itself in shape and size; the two others were of the same sectional magnitude, but each only about one-fifth part of the length. When approached to iron-filings they exhibited nothing, and behaved merely like unmagnetic iron; but the sensitive patient, nevertheless, felt the large armature—
One end at 26 yards. The other end at 22 yards.
The cross pieces—
One end at 9 yards. Both together at 17 yards. The other end 12 yards. Both together 23 yards.
The simple armatures, therefore, acted nearly as strongly upon the patient as the magnetic rod itself, and must, therefore, be placed almost in the same rank for crystallic force. Any delusion, which might be suspected from this surprising result, is out of the question, since it was impossible that the observer could distinguish at the distance whether the object was a few yards nearer or further off, and the results all harmonise under a common point of view, and are thus controlled.
195. Three days later her excitability became much increased with the advent of menstruation. I repeated the measurement of the distance at which the patient was affected by the magnet. But it was necessary now to make use of all the rooms and both the balconies, and after I had used up the sixty yards of my rectilinear space, she felt the effect of the large nine-fold magnet still so vividly, that she estimated that double the length would hardly suffice to reach the limit of the sensation. I now tried the half-square foot of brimstone. It had affected Miss Maix at a distance of eight yards, but the length of the chamber did not allow of its being removed to a greater distance in that case. Here, however, the sulphur now produced a sensation of cooling at distances up to forty yards. Astonished at this, I tried a copper plate of about four square feet of surface; the effect of this extended, as warmth, to thirty-one yards.
An iron plate of six square feet gave warmth at a distance of 49 yards. Lead foil, such as is used for packing tobacco, six square feet 25 yards. Tin foil, six square feet 23½ yards. Zinc plate, six square feet 21½ yards. Silvered paper, pure, one square foot 7¾ yards. Gold paper, pure, three square feet 23 yards. An electrophorus cake of about sixteen inches diameter 33 yards. A common mirror containing about ten square feet of surface 35½ yards. A small flask of oxygen gas 6 yards.
A quantity of other things,—brass objects, porcelain vessels, glass work, stone tables, bright-coloured wooden plates, outspread linen, open or closed flaps of doors, chandeliers on the ceiling of the room, entire trees, approaching human beings, horses, dogs, cats, pools of water, especially when they had been shone on a short time by the sun; in short, all and everything that presents itself as material in space, acted upon the sensitive girl, flowing either as a cooling or warming influence on to her,—in many so strong that it attracted her attention and became burdensome, in many so weak that when she had become accustomed to it she thought no more about it.
196. This extraordinary phenomenon, where a human being became distinctly aware of the presence of a bit of metal plate, a couple of leaves of gold, or a piece of tin foil, without seeing it, at a distance of a hundred paces, was so astonishing to me, that I could not repress my great amazement, which, however, only produced a laugh from Miss Reichel, who had been accustomed to all this, without interruption, during her whole life. All my sensitive patients, sick and healthy, had, without exception, experienced the same sensations and perceptions, under favourable circumstances, more strongly or more weakly, in a wider or narrower extent, according to the subjective excitability of the individual. Apparently all this was nothing else than a manifestation of the often-mentioned so-called crystallic force in a—perhaps modified—more general form, and the conclusion which was drawn above (§ 178), from the investigations with Miss Nowotny alone, now obtains its extension and validity for all the persons subjected to the trial:—namely, that ALL solid substances, in contact with sufficiently sensitive persons, produce reactionary sensations of a peculiar kind, differing in degree according to their different chemical composition; that these reactions are principally expressed in apparent differences of temperature, such as cool and tepid, with which a sensation advances by more or less equal steps from pleasant and disagreeable; and that finally these reactions have every resemblance to the sensations which are produced by the force of crystals, magnets, hands, &c.
The essential matter now, in order to demonstrate the identity of the cause with the crystallic force, is to investigate the rest of its characteristics.
197. Is this universally-distributed force transferable from one body to others? capable of being accumulated, as I have often expressed it, without by any means intending to pledge myself to regard it as material? I made a strange first experiment, which led to the answer to this question, on Miss Maix. She received a visit from her sister, Miss Barbara Maix. The latter was healthy to outward appearance, but suffered from a variety of nervous affections. She took the hand of the patient, but had not held it long before she let it go again, suddenly, with a shudder. " What in the world have you in your hand that pricks me so?" she cried. There was nothing there. Immediately before this the patient had been holding a piece of sulphur in her hand. This pricking was repeated as often as the hand was reached out. And when it gradually died away, it could be renewed, at will, by the patient holding a piece of sulphur again in her hand for some time. This shows clearly that the imaginary pricking, which subsequently presented itself very often, was nothing else than a transfer of certain unknown qualities of the sulphur into the hand which held it, and which were then reflected to the second hand possessing the same excitability for sulphur and similar things. When I myself grasped sulphur for some time in my hand, and, after a pause, took Miss Maix's, she experienced the pricking sensation from me, and recognised what I had previously held.
198. This was shown more distinctly by experiments derived by reasoning from the above. I placed the German silver conductor in Miss Maix's hand, and allowed her to become accustomed to it in the usual way. I then made her lay it down anywhere, and placed a piece of sulphur upon it. After some minutes I again took this away, and allowed the sensitive girl to grasp the conductor again. She immediately recognised acutely the feelings which the sulphur always produced in her, and therefore something had passed from the sulphur into the conductor, became fixed there, allowed itself to be carried forward by the conductor, and reacted upon the band of the sensitive.
199. The experiments with Miss Reichel gave exactly similar results. In the first place, I repeated with her the hand experiment of the sisters Maix, without telling her anything about it. I took a roll of sulphur in my hand, and grasped it for five minutes. I then laid it down, and with this hand took hold of that of Miss Reichel I had not held it long, before she cried out, and complained that my band was full of needles. She experienced the sensation of innumerable fine pickings all over the surfaces in contact, —an exact confirmation of Miss Maix's observation by the hands of two other persons, and thus a striking proof of the extent to which objective reality lies at the bottom of these phenomena. This hand of mine, which I carefully kept from touching anything else in the meanwhile, had not become pure again, after a full quarter of an hour, but felt prickly still, though in a weaker degree. It had, therefore, received an accumulation of the force of the sulphur, which it retained for a considerable time, and which it lost very slowly.
I placed a pair of steel scissars, which she simply found warm, upon some sulphur, and let her take hold of these after some time. The scissars had now become cold, and pricked the hand of the observer, as above. I took a glass tube, forty inches long, which was very slightly warm to her, touched one end for a minute with sulphur, then took it away and gave the other end to the sensitive girl to feel. She now found this very cool; after five minutes, I let her take hold of it again; the coolness was diminished, but still existed distinctly. After the lapse of half an hour the glass was felt again, and had again acquired its original slight degree of heat. Sulphuric acid applied in a similar manner to another glass tube, not, however, brought immediately in contact with the tube, but with the interposition of the side of the glass bottle, had the same effect.
Caffeine, in quantity not more than a few hundredths of a grain, placed in a small thin glass tube, and after a short time taken out again, left the tube considerably warmed.
My young daughter O. laid one hand, which had been tested previously, for a short time upon a number of layers of gold paper, and then gave it to the patient. She found its warmth greatly increased. Felt again at the end of three minutes, she found half of the warmth-exciting cause still in the hand; but after seven minutes there was none, and the hand had regained its natural condition.
A glass full of powdered gum, itself weakly cooling, was placed close beside a bottle containing potassium in naphtha, which belonged to the strongly warming bodies. After the lapse of a few minutes it gave a sensation of alternating cold and heat; it seemed as if a part of the gum had been overpowered by the potassium, while the rest, perhaps the inner portion, was not affected in the given time.
Gold leaf always gave her warmth in a strong degree. I placed an empty glass bottle, which by itself she found cool, upon the gold leaf,—pure, be it understood, not the alloyed, which generally occurs in commerce. I turned it about on all sides, from time to time, to make contact at all parts. I then made the observer grasp the bottle. She no longer found it cool, but very remarkably warm. The gold leaf had inoculated the glass with its warming quality.
I held selenite, itself cold, for some time in my right hand; it did not notably alter. Enclosed in my left fingers, it acquired the power of giving out warmth. Oxide of copper in a glass bottle, cold by itself, underwent a similar change in my left hand.
I placed potassium in naphtha, warm by itself, in close contact with a quantity of fragments of sulphur. After some minutes it had become perfectly cold, as cold now as it had been warm before. The sulphur had therefore not merely removed the apparent heat of one of the strongest bodies, but so overpowered it that in addition it had implanted in it its own peculiar coldness. This accumulation also manifested a duration of several minutes after the separation.
The German-silver conductor, itself slightly warm, was placed in common salt. After a short pause it came from it cold. Fluor spar was then laid upon it; this made it still colder. I next covered it with abundance of bits of sulphur for a minute; -again, when it had been taken out, it presented an increase of its coldness.
Finally, a roll of sulphur was applied against potassium for a short time. After the separation it was observably less cold. Left longer in contact it became cold and warm, simultaneously, in different parts. Then, laid upon my left hand for some time, it completely lost all its coolness; and when I at last enveloped it in the gold leaves, and kept it there for a while, the roll of sulphur even became hot.
200. Miss Atzmannsdorfer always found copper rather tepid. One day, however, that I gave it her to try, she said that she felt it cooling. This was in opposition to the earlier observations; I therefore waited a moment to seek what might be the cause. The copper was a thin, smooth plate, and lay upon a polished table of walnut-wood. I made her feel the table, on different parts of the leaf, of the edge, and of the feet; she found it cool in all parts. I took the copper plate away, and left it for a while on a seat cushioned with silk stuff. When she again took hold of the copper she found it tepid, as all other copper always was. I now placed it on the table again; at the end of five minutes she found it cold again. I stretched the copper between the cheeks of a little vice; after a short interval it felt warm again. Whenever it was brought back on the table for a little while it became cold again. It was evident that the great mass of the cold-reacting table overpowered the magnetic heat of the weak copper plate, and the latter became cool, by accumulation of charge, every time it was involved for a certain period, in the sphere of action of the walnut-wood. By a great number of experiments, therefore, I established, that the property of bodies here in question may be transferred from one to another by mere contact, exactly like the so-called crystallic force.
201. We have already become acquainted with the power of acting at a distance, in the magnet, crystals, the fingers, the heavenly bodies, &c., excercised by the force under discussion; we have even seen matter in general exercise it on the cataleptic Misses Nowotny, Sturmann, and Atsmannsdorfer; also on Miss Maix and Miss Reichel in the free, conscious state: the question now arises, whether the force is, in like manner, capable of transference from one body to another, at distances, without contact? To decide this I placed beside the German-silver conductor a roll of sulphur of equal length, at a distance of three quarters of an inch, without contact at any point. After a few minutes the sulphur was removed, and the conductor grasped by Miss Reichel. It was warm before, but now she felt it perfectly cold, as much so as if it had been in immediate contact with the sulphur. At the end of four minutes it still retained almost half its coolness, which did not wholly disappear under a good quarter of an hour.
Sulphate of copper, broken small and in paper, was laid beside the broad 40-inch glass tube, at the distance of ten inches, all contact being avoided. In five minutes it was taken away, and the tube taken hold of at both ends by the sensitive observer. In spite of this relatively considerable distance she found the glass to have been rendered cool by the sulphuric acid salt; and this persisted several minutes.
I learnt from these experiences that 1 must avoid using my own hands in these delicate experiments, on account of their magnetic power, to guard against any complication; at the same time I recognised here hints for the explanation of many anomalies in my previous researches, wherein my sensitive observers so frequently did not agree together in their statements of heat and cold: it might often have been my own hands which altered the natural condition of bodies, by conveying their own force on to them. On this account I let my daughter. H. place her hand in that of Miss Reichel, and accustomed the latter to it; then held the same hand over a surface of sulphur, without contact. At the end of two minutes she offered it to the observer. That needle-like pricking which actual contact with sulphur had produced in all the other cases, immediately presented itself in the hand, together with coolness. The same experiment was made with the same results by my .daughter 0. The patient experienced the pricking from the hand of the little girl that had been waved over sulphur, at the end of half a quarter of an hour. I pass over other similar experiments.
202. This proves, that the transfer of the often mentioned essential force from one body to another is effected without contact by the mere approximation of them toward each other.
203. The conduction of it through other bodies is certainly sufficiently demonstrated by all the preceding experiments; but I will here insert a couple of remarkable confirmatory examples. I connected Miss Reichel with a copper plate by an iron wire thirty-three yards long and one-twelfth of an inch thick, she holding the other extremity in her hand. I brought successively on to the copper plate, zinc, tin, lead, gold, mercury, potassium, potash, potash ley, and minium; all delivered warmth to the hand through the plate and along the wire after the lapse of half a minute: on the contrary, sulphur, carbon, oxalic acid, aqua regia, sulphate of iron, and common salt, gave cold in the same space of time. The sensation likewise began to vanish after the interval of half a minute, when the objects were removed, and required several minutes for its complete disappearance. Sulphur gave a sensation of cold when only brought into the neighbourhood of this long conductor. The German-silver conductor alone, laid upon the copper plate, gave warmth; but when I previously kept it for a few minutes upon sulphur, and then brought it upon the copper plate again with my right hand, it gave a persisting cold. I rolled up an empty glass bottle, which by itself delivered slight cold (different glasses always varied between cold and warm), for a few minutes in gold leaf; freed from this, and brought with my left hand on to the copper plate, it delivered lively warmth to the distant hand of the observer. Taking a large glass tube forty inches long, and wide enough to admit the hand, I introduced, one after another, a quantity of chemical preparations of the most varied kinds, solid and fluid, together with the glass bottles containing them. The sensitive patient described, as occurring at the other end of the tube, which she held in her hand, sensations exactly the same, in order, as those I had marked down from her in the earlier experiments, with the immediate contact of them with the hand. In another way, I gave her a thin glass stirring rod' like a thermometer tube, but solid, between her fingers, and made her dip this, in order, into the contents of many glass bottles of amorphous chemical preparations of all kinds. Her account of the sensations produced by the glass rod in her fingers, agreed, word for word, with those on the broad glass tube; so that a rod of this kind affords the most convenient of all means for the purpose, as dry, fluid, volatile or bad-smelling things can be tested with it, as to their magnetic value, rapidly and without the least difficulty. Miss Maix also furnished me with a few proofs referable here. I had connected a copper plate with her hand, by means of a copper wire. As I placed upon its surface, partly immediately, partly in bottles, sulphur, sulphuric acid, selenium, sugar, silk, wet linen, &c., she described, successively, the same sensations as she had experienced when she had the same substances immediately in her hand.
My daughter Ottone gave one hand to Miss Reichel, and held the other over a surface of sulphur, without touching it. After the lapse of half a minute the latter found the hand of the former become cold; and at the end of a whole minute the pricking sensation from sulphur, already often mentioned, made its appearance. An hour later this experiment was repeated, with the modification that the hand was held over a number of layers of gold leaf instead of sulphur, this time also with careful avoidance of contact. At the end of about half a minute again, a sensation of warmth passed from the hand of the healthy person into that of the patient, which continued to increase for a minute, and then remained steady.
204. All this testifies that the force which emanates from amorphous substances of all kinds, is conducted and carries its efficiency with it through matter of every kind, even through living human beings; nay, that this holds good not only in case of actual contact, but even with mere approximation of one substance to another.
205. Capacity of accumulation, coercive power, &c. need no further illustration, since these are already discussed by implication in the foregoing.
206. Consequently only the luminous phenomena remain to be tested. These have actually shown themselves convincingly enough. When I undertook experiments on the luminosity of crystals in the dark, with Miss Reichel, she led me to notice, by remarks upon the bolts of the doors, the fastenings of the windows, and other metallic objects of which she spoke, that she saw all such things. When I brought a freshly-cleaned copper vessel to her, I accordingly heard that she saw it luminous all over, and that a fine green nebulous flame waved immediately above it, streaming out beyond the borders of the copper. I at once undertook a long investigation of this, which I continued and repeated for confirmation at different times, partly in Vienna, partly here, in my summer residences. From this it resulted that all metals, generally speaking all simple bodies, without any crystalline condition, appeared luminous in sufficient darkness to the eyes of the highly sensitive; that compound bodies do also, but weaker and weaker the more complex they become. To test this on different sides, I brought a great number of things into the dark, one after another. Miss Reichel saw the substance of most metals with a red luminosity, as if glowing; some of them white, some yellow. Over all waved a delicate flame, which moved backwards and forwards over them, was of different colour in different metals, but was definite for each, and could be driven about by a current of air caused by the hand or the breath. The more complex bodies only exhibited flames at their points, when they were crystallized, otherwise they were mostly either surrounded by a luminous vapour, or even only themselves bright and luminous, as if glowing. The darkness gave me an excellent opportunity of controlling the statements rigidly. I brought to her in the dark, at different times, different, and then, alternately, again the same substances, which no one could recognise in the dark, and it was necessarily clearly manifest in this way whether her later statements agreed with the earlier. This was perfectly the case in reference to the luminous phenomena generally; their strength and their form; also on the simple substances, in reference to their colour; but not quite so in the more compound. The colour of the luminosity appears, like that of the flame of combustion, to depend upon the quality of the matter from which it issues, and upon every significant intermixture. Miss Reichel always found the following substances alike, as often as I held them before her in the dark:-
All these results I found always the same in numerous trials, when the darkness was perfect: when this was imperfect, however, slight. variations of the appearances occurred, bluish red became blue, and the like. On the other hand, the coloured luminosities did not agree so completely in compound bodies, often even varying, and therefore I can give no account of them until I have subjected them to fresh and more fundamental trials. In particular, the same alkaloids, prepared by different hands, often presented essentially different colours in their light, which apparently depended, therefore, upon their different degrees of purity.
In general these lights and flames had always something of electrical light, so that the colour, which like the latter varied about between red, blue, green, and yellow, was frequently very difficult to determine with accuracy. It had every resemblance of aspect to the magnetic and crystallic flame, and was regarded by the observer only as a lower degree of those to her so well-known appearances, to which she had been accustomed from her childhood, and of which she, at the advice of her dead mother, had hitherto never communicated anything to any one, for fear of being regarded by other people as supernatural and haunted.
207. It follows, consequently, that all fluid and solid, therefore all bodies of any density generally, give out emations of light in the form of flames, appearance of glowing, and vaporous luminosity, in the same manner as the magnet, crystals, &c. &c.
205. In order to complete these examinations of the whole of material things, it was necessary to turn a glance to the starry heavens. We have seen in the fourth treatise the important influence exercised by the sun and moon; this necessarily led me to the idea of investigating whether all the stars which shine in the heavens, collectively, were wholly without action, and whether some weaker display of force, proportionate to the distance, which possibly might he detected in a smaller degree, Might not perhaps correspond to the mighty influence exercised on our planet by the former larger and more proximate heavenly bodies.
209. At the windows of my dwelling, which aflbrded an uninterrupted prospect toward the east and south of from twenty to thirty miles, where I placed Miss Reichel at night, when the sky was clear, she at once recognised an undoubted influence, as 1 had conjectured. I repaired with her at eight o'clock in the evening, in the middle of October, to the neighbouring free mountain heights, where there was a wide prospect all round. There was no moon, and the air was perfectly still. She found coolness to come to her from some parts of the sky, and warmth from others. This was repeated on different. nights and at different hours; soon after sunset, then at nine o'clock P. M., twice at midnight, once in the morning about four o'clock, and just before sunrise. Generally speaking, she stated that soon after sunset, namely, at six o'clock, the direction toward the west was most vividly cold; but just before sunrise, likewise at six o'clock, the direction toward the east; that long after sunset, about nine o'clock, north and north-west were the cooler, south and south-east the wanner parts of the sky; but some time before sunrise, about four A. 51., north and north-east were the cooler, south and south-west the warmer directions; lastly, that at midnight the north was cool,the south warm, but east and west so nearly of an equal apparent temperature, that the east could only be felt a little warmer than the west. An observation which was to have been made between two and three A. M., but which .did not take place, would most likely have given east and west pretty nearly of equal temperature.
210. This alternation of the results was evidently an effect of the place of the sun. We know from the fourth of these treatises that the rays of the sun give out cold wherever it was nearest; the west in the evening, the east in the morning, the greatest coolness always existed; at midnight, when the sun was in its lower culmination, the difference was almost effaced; but there still remained some aftereffect of the sun in the west, which it left behind up to that time, and a complete neutralization was not to be expected before three o'clock A.M. That this alternation between east and west is really to be ascribed to no other cause, is proved by the observation that these sensations developed themselves just in the same way when the sky was covered with clouds. In all these cases, however, the north remained constantly cold, the south warm; and when I questioned her minutely as to the direction of the two, she always pointed with her hand in the direction of the magnetic, and never of the astronomical meridian. In particular, she asserted that a clearly defined streak of the greatest warmth was to be detected towards the south, projecting itself from the remaining space. Even at noon she found the direction of the magnetic south the warmest, and the diametrically opposite, that is, the north, the coolest of all the points of the compass. This affords a clear index how these results are to be interpreted in a theoretical examination of them.
211. But these half telluric, half solar phenomena, must not be confounded with the astral, with which they are complicated in our sensations. When I stood at night with Miss Reichel under a bright starry'sky, she described the milky way as affecting her distinctly with coolness; as also the group of the Pleiades, the region of the Great Bear, and others, and the broad starry vault in general as cooling; particular stars alone, on the contrary, warm: these were always stars of the first magnitude; and when I examined her about them with the dyalite, I found Saturn with his rings, Jupiter with his four satellites, Venus,—in short, in every case a planet. Experience, therefore, shows that all stars with reflected light appear warm to the sensitive, while all others with proper light are cool. This ranges itself, then, very beautifully with the experiments made before, when the moon gave warmth, the sun (that is, the fixed star) coolness.
212. It was even possible to warrant this by certain reactions. Gazing at Jupiter, as at all brilliant light, was unbearable to her for any length of time. Of all the stars together, she said that they acted upon her in combination like a rather weak magnet, not merely in front, but behind, upon the spine; principally, however, on the head, where she was most highly sensitive to all magnetic influences. I connected acopper plate of about a foot square with a long brass wire, which led to the sensitive, whom I had shut up in darkness on the staircase. The wire gave out at its extremity, from the copper and from itself, a small flame; but when I let the light of the stars fall on the copper plate, without making this known to the patient, she informed me after a short pause of the rising of a slender flame to the height of more than a span. It rose and sank again as I placed the copper plate, in the starlight, or removed it. When I took a zinc plate instead of the copper plate, I had the same results with the same alternation, only weaker. The plate furnished corresponding effects upon the feeling. The wire carried from it became cooler, when the starlight fell upon it, more when no large planet could shine upon the plate, less when one of these partly neutralized the collective action of the stars.
In these observations there is nothing which should be very surprising after the contents of the preceding treatises; but they are certainly a beautiful voucher on the one hand for confirmation of that which we have already observed in the sun and moon; on the other hand, of the fact that the whole material world, even that external to the earth, acts upon us with just that same force, which displayed itself as existing in all terrestrial matter: finally, that we stand in connexion with the universe by a new, hitherto unsuspected reciprocation; that consequently the stars, also, are actually not altogether without influence upon our sublunary, perhaps even practical world, and the proceedings of many heads.
213. Thus we arrive at the concluding result of this trestle:—In the same manner as the capacity dwells in the magnet, crystals, organic beings, the sun's rays, heat, electricity, &c., which have been recognised as special sources, to display characters of an unknown force common to them, so has this force its seat in all the investigated, most dissimilar, and thus doubtless also in all even aeriform amorphous matter, the heavenly bodies themselves included, and takes its place, therefore, as a perfectly universal and all-pervading force of Nature. In the first ten sources, we see it appear concentrated in isolated points of the material world; here, however, we recognise it as an universal adjunct of all matter in variable, unequal distribution.
214. Whether now this natural force extending over the universe is a totally new, or a hitherto hidden modification of a known one, or whether it is a complication of some of the already known, in a still uncomprehended collocation — this, and much else of importance that still remains in question, I leave untouched for the present. I have now arrived at the point, where all the sources from which I have seen it evolved, are combined and included. In the succeeding treatises, I shall compare them one with another, and strive to develope them in many relations which I have as yet only partially indicated; higher judges will then perhaps undertake to pronounce judgment on the whole.
215. In conclusion, I will further venture to make an effort toward the removal of the difficulties of language connected with subjects of this kind, and with which I have manifestly been struggling all through this work. In the cases where the force, now in question, has been seen to present itself, in isolated manifestations, during the last seventy years, it has had the greatest variety of names applied to it, almost all of which have been derived from certain resemblances or complications with magnetism. It has always been regarded as more or less identical with the latter. But, from what I have unfolded, it is seen that it has no more identity with this, than magnetism has with crystallization, than crystallization with electricity, electricity with affinity, than heat with light, &c. We do, indeed, suspect the final unity of all these dynamics in the ultimate, higher instance; but at present we are far distant from this desired goal of natural science: we cannot even fill up the gap which exists between magnetism and electricity, which appears so small that one imagines that one can reach with the hands from one side to the other. But so long as an empty iron rod, which will not support an iron filing, displays as much power in regard to the force, of which we are treating, as a powerful steel magnet of equal size, ?194; so long as magnets and crystals are met with acting with equal strength upon the nerves, the former of which will support masses of iron, while the latter will not lift up a filing, ?? 37, 42, 43, 44, and no scientific account can be offered of this vast distinction, so long will the two forces remain essentially different, so that we cannot examine them under a common point of view; and therefore, for the present, a peculiar fitting name appears to be necessarily required. Leaving the etymological derivation to be justified at some other opportunity, I will take the liberty to propose the short word Od for the force which we are engaged in examining. Every one will admit it to be desirable that an uni-syllabic word beginning with a vowel should be selected for an object which occurs universally in an infinity of complex conditions of the material world, for the sake of convenient conjunction in the manifold compound words. The words magnetism, electricity, &c., are by far too long for convenient use in the language of science. When they are lengthened by additions, as in vital magnetism, animal magnetism, &c., it becomes as burdensome as it is false, for these things do not belong exclusively or even principally to life, still less are they identical with magnetism. To that which supports iron, and constitutes the compass, let us leave the old name, with the original conception of a supporter of iron, which belongs to it. If, then, the term Od shall be found acceptable, in general use, for the force which does not support iron, and for which we require and seek a name, the nomenclature for all its various kinds of derivation may be easily formed by composition: avoiding all circumlocutions, instead of saying, " the Od derived from crystallization," we may name this product crystallod, that from animal life biod, that from heat thermod, that from electricity briefly as elod, from light photod, and so on, magnetod, chymod, heliod, artemod, tribod, and for the material world generally, pantod, &c. I am quite aware that objections may be urged, here and there, against the grammatical accuracy; that it might, perhaps, be more correct to say thermood, &c. Nevertheless, when it is intended that new words should make their way into practical use, custom rind convenience require that the schools should sacrifice some of the strictness of grammatical accuracy to euphony. It is possible, indeed very probable, that we shall one day succeed in bringing the incommensurable fractions which we now comprehend under the names of magnetism, electricity, crystallization, light, heat, affinity, &c., under a common denominator; but the numerators will always remain unlike, and therefore it will always be necessary to connect and retain groups of phenomena, which we call magnetism, electricity, &c.; and thus, whatever may be the ultimate scientific fate of this which I now think it necessary to comprise under a new expression, we shall scarcely at any time be able to dispense with such a word as Od, or some synonymous one in its place.