SECOND TREATISE

CRYSTALS

Crystals: the relation of these and of the magnet to human organs. The poles of crystals. Light and force of these.

23. Previously to my visits, Miss Nowotny's physician had repeated some of the observations of the older physicians in cataleptic cases, in particular those which Dr. Petetin, at Lyons, in 1788, as well as other persons, had investigated and made known;—that when a powerful magnet was placed upon the hand, it adhered to it in the same way as a piece of iron to the magnet; moreover, that water through which the magnet had been passed a few times, was accurately distinguished by the patients from common water. The latter was first observed and made known by Mesmer, often enough ridiculed, and as often re-asserted. We shall see in the course of the present investigation how much of it is found true, and how much false, by the test of physics. The adhesion1 of a living member to a magnet is a fact totally unknown both in physics and physiology, and few persons have satisfied themselves on the point by inspection; it is necessary, therefore, to examine and elucidate it in some measure in this place. When the sick Miss Nowotny lay unconscious and motionless in a cataleptic condition, but free from spasms, and a horse-shoe magnet, capable of sustaining some 22 lbs., was brought near her hand, this adhered to it in such a manner that when the magnet was raised, or moved sideways, backward, or in any desired position, the hand remained constantly attached to it, as if it had been a piece of iron cleaving to it. The patient remained perfectly unconscious all the while; but the attraction was so strong, that when the magnet was drawn down in the direction of the feet, beyond the reach of the patient's arm, she not only did not leave it, but, in an unconscious state, rose up in the bed and followed the magnet with her hand as long as it was at all within her reach: thus it looked as if the patient had been grasped by the hand, and her body thus been drawn toward her feet. Finally, when the magnet was removed beyond its distance of attraction, she was indeed compelled to leave it, but then remained unalterable and immoveable in the position in which she had been placed, according to the well-known manner of cataleptic patients. This I saw daily, between six and eight o'clock in the evening, when the patient had her fits; and eight or ten persons, physicians, physicists, chemists, and friends of science, were usually witnesses of it, to name whom can be of no essential use to me.

When I visited the girl at other times of the day, in the morning for instance, I found that the phenomena were still the same at the time of her best and clearest consciousness. Her hand followed the magnet which I placed on it, exactly in the same way as when she was in the unconscious cataleptic condition. The account of the matter which I obtained from her added little to the explication of this physical singularity; she described her sensation as an irresistible attraction, which she felt compelled to follow unconditionally and involuntarily, and which she was obliged to obey even against her will. It was an agreeable sensation, as if connected with a cool gentle wind, issuing from the magnet on to the hand, which seemed to be attached to it as by a thousand fine threads, and to be drawn along by it. In other respects she knew of nothing at all like in life, and the whole was a peculiar, indescribable sensation, in which lay a refreshing, infinite pleasure, when the magnet was of the right size and not too strong.2

I subsequently had opportunity to observe exactly the same phenomenon in Miss Reichel. The complaint was different here, but also connected with periodical cataleptic fits, and both in these and in the awake condition her hand followed a strong magnet, exactly in the way I have described it in Miss Nowotny. Professor Lippich reported the same to me of a stage of the disease of Miss Sturmann, which I was prevented from examining myself; and I have every reason to place unconditional trust in the accuracy of the statement. These different cases, compared with those of a similar kind which Petetin, Rick, and others furnish from past times, leave no doubt of the correctness of the fact, that in certain diseases, especially those in which catalepsy exists, a distinct attraction occurs between the human hand and strong magnets.3

I also made an experiment on the feet of Miss Nowotny; there also I found a like attraction, but far weaker; but no other place, sensitive in this way, existed in any part of the body.

24. The first and most immediate question that arose now was, whether the attraction which the magnet exercised upon the patient was reciprocal, or whether it was exerted by it upon bodies capable of participating in the diffusion of magnetism, and, like iron, temporarily converted into magnets by the approximation of a magnetic body; in other words, whether, through her diseased condition, magnetism, and, with this, magnetic attraction, resided in herself? To decide this I took some iron filings and brought the patient's finger over them; they did not adhere in the slightest degree, even when she was in contact with the magnet, and might thus have been more strongly influenced than she might have been naturally. A suspended magnetic needle which I brought to her, and which I bade her hold her finger dose to at both poles, and in variously modified alternating ways, was not caused to diverge or oscillate in the least. Another experiment in reference to this point was made at the desire and in the presence of M. Baumgartner. When the baud, and with it. the whole arm, were lifted up by the magnet, it seemed to many that the horse-shoe became as much heavier as the weight of the attached burden, the arm, amounted to. I could not find this myself, but many persons believed that they felt it distinctly. The horse-shoe was therefore attached to the beam of a pair of scales, and its weight balanced by a counterpoise. After the patient's hand had been spread out flat, with the back on a firm support, I held it fast down upon this by the tips of the fingers, and the freely suspended magnet was brought near to it: the hand strove to move toward this, and I was obliged to exert some force to keep it back; but the index of the balance did not stir in the least, even when the magnet almost touched the fingers, and then strove so convulsively to contract, that I had much trouble to retain them in their flat position.

While I was busied with these investigations, the known statement of Thilorier, that he had magnetised steel by induction from nervous patients, appeared in the journals: whether the induction here depended solely or only in part upon the disease, I must leave unsettled: the result in Vienna was, that I soon received news from their physician that both Miss Reiehel and Miss Maix converted every steel needle into a magnet, by holding it in the hand for some time. I went to see the patients, who assured me of the correctness of the matter, and showed me knitting needles which supported common sewing needles. I made the experiment with them myself; procured knitting needles which were not at all magnetic, removed all magnets from the vicinity of the patients, and gave them the needles. At my desire they held them in the hand, first the same length of time, then twice as long as in the previous experiments, in which their medical attendant stated he had produced magnets with them, but the needles were not magnetic now, and all endeavour to make them so was in vain. Doubtless it had been neglected before to examine the condition of the needles previously to the experiment, for among a dozen knitting needles always half are more or less magnetic. Lastly, I was assured that Miss Sturmann was so magnetic that she caused the magnetic needle to diverge from 20 to 30 degrees. I was invited to a trial by Professor Lippich, and really saw a freely suspended needle considerably deflected. As the needle was not sufficiently secured from currents of air, I undertook the experiment next day, with the precaution of placing the needle in a vessel which was covered by a glass plate at the top, so that we could see all that took place. At the side I had made a round hole just large enough to admit a finger. By this means the patient could bring her finger quite close to the needle without setting the air in motion, while the breath of those standing round could no longer exert any influence on the experiment. When the finger was introduced, it appeared this time that some attraction occurred. I examined the tip of the finger, and as it seemed rather moist, I rubbed it over with flour for another trial: then all attraction for the magnet was at once at an end; the needle remained motionless. It was evident that in the former case the very mobile needle had adhered to the finger from the presence of slight perspiration, and when the slight stickiness of this was removed by the flour, all attraction ceased directly. It was not of magnetic nature, but an effect of adhesion. Quite superfluously I afterwards introduced Miss Sturmann's finger into the helix of a differential galvanometer: neither when inserted or taken out was any induced current perceptible, and the astatic needle remained immoveable.

25. From the preceding it follows, that the attraction exercised by the magnet upon the hands and feet of cataleptic patients is nothing ponderable; it has no supporting power, cannot even raise iron filings, and is equally incapable of affecting the magnetic needle and inducing a magnetic current. The arm lifted up in catalepsy therefore supported itself, and its passive attraction was quite different in its import from that of iron toward the magnet, or, more accurately, toward magnetically oppositely polarized matter in the sense hitherto received.

It is known well enough that we are not acquainted in physics with any attraction which is not reciprocal. On the other hand, it is equally well known that a person in a state of cataleptic unconsciousness, which cannot be feigned, not only has no free will, but in fact no will at all:4 since, therefore, the magnetic mechanical attraction by the magnet is a fact, which is not only established here by sufficient experiments, but may readily be tested and confirmed in every large town, where such patients are never wanting, it acquires, in spite of all its apparent strangeness, a solid, scientific certitude, and imperiously claims further investigation. Not in order to explain it, but to render it provisionally in some degree comprehensible, I venture to refer to all the attractions and repulsions which the vegetative life of animals and plants unceasingly brings to pass, in thousand-fold variety, without our being able at present either to perceive or even to infer a counter attraction. A root penetrates strongly into the hard soil, breaks and bursts powerful mechanical obstacles: we perceive no cause for the counter-attraction or counter-expulsion which so powerfully impels it thereto, and yet it happens. Similar conditions lead the hand of the patient toward the magnet, whether we now comprehend it or not.
26. When, instead of a middle-sized magnet of some 201b. capacity, we took a strong one capable of bearing 901b. and placed this on the flat hand of Miss Nowotny, she grasped, both in the conscious and unconscious state, the presented ends of the horse-shoe, and laid hold of it so firmly that it could not be taken away from her without great effort. She herself was unable to loosen her hold. The whole hand was clenched spasmodically, and the cramp knitted the fingers round the magnet, and contracted the whole hand so violently that all voluntary power of motion ceased. 5
27. I have already (§ 2) mentioned the magnetized water which the patient immediately distinguished from common water, when ignorant of what had been done to it. Nothing could be more disagreeable than the reappearance of an apparently so absurd thing, which all physicists and chemists are horrified even to hear of. But in spite of this, I could not refuse to admit what I saw before my eyes as often as I tried it; namely, that the girl always determined, and unfailingly distinguished, a magnetized glass of water from an unmagnetized. The force of facts cannot be combatted by any reasoning; I was compelled to recognise what I was by no means able to comprehend. But when I again met with the same subsequently in Misses Sturmann, Maur, Reichel, Atzmannsdorfer, and others, and saw it in a still stronger degree, I gave up all doubt and opposition to a phenomenon, the actuality of which no longer admitted of contradiction in any reasonable manner.6

But the Singularity seemed to reach the height of incomprehensibility when it proved that not merely the magnet, but even a simple glass of magnetised water, possessed the power of drawing along the hand of Miss Nowotny. It is true that this occurred in a much weaker degree, but her hand was unmistakeably attracted, both in the catalepsy and at every other time, by a magnetized glass of water, in such a manner that a tendency to follow this in every direction made itself evident.

Contemplating this, and convinced that so strange a phenomenon could not exist isolated in nature, I was desirous of trying whether the same effect as that of the water might not be brought about by means of some other body; if this proved to be so, I hoped to see cases occur with various modifications, from which some laws might be deduced. With this view, all sorts of minerals, preparations, drugs, and other things, were rubbed with the magnet, and the patient was tried with them in the same way as with the magnetized water; and it actually happened that all reacted at once upon her, more or less, in the same way as the magnetized water: they attracted the patient's hand more strongly or weakly, but in variously modified ways. Some produced spasms throughout the whole body, others only in the arms, others only in the hand, others scarcely caused any effect, although all had been equally strongly magnetized. It was evident, therefore, that some difference lay in the matter itself, and required to be taken into account here.

30. To investigate this, I now tried to bring the same substances into contact with the patient, Without having been previously magnetized, in their natural condition. To my great surprise, they also acted now upon the patient, with a force which very often yielded but little to that which they had exhibited in the magnetized condition. But the action was not always accompanied by a solicitation to follow the object; on the contrary, that other effect (§ 5) which had made the patient grasp the magnet convulsively in her hand, presented itself in various gradations of force. The method of experiment which I followed here, consisted in this: I first placed the various bodies in the patient's hand while in the cataleptic state, and observed the effect, then repeated the same when he was in a state of perfect consciousness, out of the catalepsy. By these comparisons, it was made evident that the action was qualitatively the same in both cases, but it showed itself incomparably stronger quantitatively in the catalepsy than out of it. The effect essentially consisted in this: that the various bodies, when placed in the hand of the unconscious patient, either—

  1. Determined an actual tonic spasm in the fingers, as the magnet did, and compelled an involuntary clenching of the hand which held the bodies. These again could be divided into such as simultaneously solicited the hand to follow them, and such as no longer visibly produced this effect; or
  2. Those which appeared inactive, and left the hand at rest; the former effect presented itself in various degrees of energy. It either ensued suddenly, directly the hand came in contact with the bodies, or it followed gradually, slowly, or rapidly. The fingers began to curl, by degrees were drawn more inward, after some time closed into a clenched hand, and then remained in a state of tonic cramp. This was precisely the effect produced by placing a very weakly magnetic rod in the patient's hand while in the unconscious state of catalepsy.


Comparing the applied bodies one with another, they arranged themselves in this respect, not according to the character of their substance, nor even in the electro-chemical series; in fact, the same chemical substances in specimens of different kinds sometimes produced the effect, sometimes did not: for example, calcareous spar, sugar, quartz, &c. First of all I perceived that there was not a single amorphous body among those which re-acted so as to make the hand close upon them; and, on the other side, that all 1 bodies which did so were crystallized. There were, nevertheless, a good many crystalline bodies without the power. When, now, excluding all amorphous substances, I arranged the whole of the crystalline bodies in two groups, opposing those which showed themselves powerless to those which exerted the magnet-like influence upon the hand, I found upon the former, the inefficient side, all the confusedly crystallized—such as loaf sugar, carrara marble, and dolomite; and further, the substances composed of many oppositely directed groups of crystals; such as prehnite, wavellite, lumps of sugar of lead, masses of Konigsberg crystallized silver; on the latter, the effective side, all simple, free crystals, and all those where the crystalline masses had parallel principal axes,—such as celestine, many specimens of gypsum, and fibrous red and brown ironstone. For the sake of distinct? ness, I give here a list of the bodies with which I made the experiments.

I. Inactive bodies.
  a. Amorphous:-  
    Ivory, wood, &c. Anthracite Chromate of iron
    Cannel coal Selenium
    Bitumen Magnesite
    Amber Menilite
    Glass of all kinds Talc, dense
    Osmium, rhodium "Gurhofian"
    Palladium Pumice-stone
    Mercury Obsidian
    Silver, gold in coin Opal, common
    Copper, brass Fossil wood
    Bar iron Egyptian jasper
    Zinc, lead, cadmium Quartz, dense with fatty lustre
    Dense limestone Hydrate of potash, dried
    Red copper ore, dense Potassium, sodium
    Melted sulphur  
    Liver of sulphur (sulphuret of potassium)
       
  b. Crystalline:-
    Granular limestone Loaf sugar
    Dolomite Speiss-glance ore
    Orpiment Prehnite
    Wavellite Natrolite
    Kakoxene  
    Native silver from Konigsberg (an irregular mass of crystals)
       
II. Active bodies, all crystalline, good, mostly large and splendid, free crystals from the imperial collection at Vienna.
  a. Those which compelled the fingers to close up and grasp the object, with scarcely sensible cramp.
    Rough Diamond, very small Argentiferous copper-ore
    Antimony, metallic Rutile
    Mesotype Lievrite
    Witherite "Spargelstein"
    Tin ore Sphene
    Mica Iron pyrites
    Corundum Anazim
    Ferrocyanide of potassium Adular
    Sugar-candy Felspar
    Leucite Boracite
    Granite Celestine
    Augite Topas
    Hornblende Apatite
    Staurolite White lead ore
    Sulphate of copper Crystallized gold, half an inch thick
    Graphite, lamellar Alum
    Wolfram Bismuth, metallic
       
  b. Those which caused the hand to close upon them convulsively, but did not attract it.
    Pistacite Magnetic iron-ore
    Glance cobalt7 Rock salt7
    Zinc-blende Rock crystal7
    Iron-glance  
       
  c. Those which acted so strongly that they caused the hand to clench upon them with violent spasm, and attracted it when brought near.
    Meteorite, from Macao Beryl
    Calcareous spar Selenite
    Arragonite Fluor spar
    Tourmaline, cold as well as warm Heavy spar
    Quartz crystal, from Fontainebleau
       
       


All these comparisons may be finally concentrated into the facts, that finely granular crystalline carbonate of lime, dense quartz, and loaf sugar, were inactive; but a free crystal of calcareous spar, a prism of rock crystal, or a good crystal of sugar-candy, therefore every perfectly free crystal, when placed in the patient's hand, irresistibly and arbitrarily excited the fingers, attracted them and drew them inward so as to grasp the crystal, and this in some of the cases with the most violent tonio spasms. Consequently, simple crystals here furnished a peculiar means of detecting a primary force, which had hitherto been altogether unknown. So far as is at present made out, this property does not belong to matter, as such, but to its form, and in fact to its condition of aggregation. Pouillet, in Miller's translation of his " Manual of Physics," p. 167, says expressly, that " it has never yet been observed in ponderable matter, that the form, the arrangement of the molecules, can be the cause of new forces acting at a distance." But this is exactly the case here; the matter must be crystallized, otherwise it does not re-act in this manner.8

32. When I now tested one of these bodies separately, I found that the capability of producing spasms of living organs did not reside in equal degree in all parts of its surface. Points were formed, and the patient readily detected those which possessed the power either very weakly or not at all; others, on the contrary, where it manifested itself in increased strength. It was discovered that every crystal presented especially two such points, in which the force peculiarly resided. And these points lay diametrically opposite to each other in every crystal; they were the poles of a primary axis of the crystal. Both acted in the same way, but one always much more strongly than the other, and with the distinction that from one appeared to issue a cool, from the other a softer, gently warm (seeming) current of air.


33. Endeavouring to trace the expressions of this force in various directions, I now made the experiment of drawing the stronger poly of a moderate sized crystal which I had at disposal, a rock-crystal two inches thick and eight inches long, a certain distance down along the inside of the hand, in the same way as is customary with the magnet, when it is intended to throw the patient into the usual sleep. It was found that the effect was exactly the same as that produced by a small magnetic needle, such- as is used in a compass, which I had at hand for comparison. This needle was nearly six inches long, one-eighth of an inch broad, and one twenty-fifth of an inch thick, weighed about one hundred and eighty-five grains, and supported about twice its own weight. When I drew the point of the crystal along downward from the wrist, slowly through the palm of the hand to the tips of the fingers, the patient had the sensation of a pleasant, light, cool breeze directed over her; when I took the little magnetic needle, it produced the same in the like degree. When I reversed the experiment, so that I carried the pass from the middle finger upwards to the wrist, the magnetic needle produced a contrary, luke-warm sensation, evidently disagreeable to the patient;—the point of the crystal produced exactly the same when the reverse pass was made with it in the same way. Another time I brought a crystal three times as large: when drawn downward over the hand, it behaved like a magnetic bar capable of supporting a pound and a quarter of iron; but the reversed pass, up the hand, acted so violently, that the spasmodic condition produced by it ascended along the arm as far as the arm-pit, continued for several minutes, and by its violence rendered a repetition improper.


34. Furnished with these facts, I repaired to the hospital of our University, with a view to try whether the observations which I had gathered from Miss Nowotny could be repeated on other 'similar patients, confirmed, and brought to some degree of generality. Under the kind permission of Dr. Lippich I again directed my attention to Miss Angelica Sturmann. I made the pass over her hand with the apex of a rock crystal six inches long and two inches thick.

The effect ensued immediately, the patient felt the warm and cool sensations very distinctly when the passes were made over the hand When I applied the other pole of the crystal in the same manner, the sensations were just of the same kind, but weaker and reversed: these two patients therefore agreed with each other. The action on the sick Miss Sturmann was so strong that it affected the whole arm as far as the shoulder, the warm and cold sensations being prolonged all the way up. When I subsequently applied a crystal three times as large, this acted so powerfully upon the hand, immediately upon the first pass, that her colour came and went suddenly, so that I did not venture upon a second experiment with it here.

I now tried the pass from the head down over the face; she described everything here exactly in the same way, and the sensation was especially perceived along the temples. Counter-experiments with the above-mentioned magnetic needle produced exactly similar effects, only the needle was here evidently felt more weakly than the rock crystal. Finally, I afterwards made the same experiments on Miss Maix. On this very sensitive patient, who, however, always remained fully conscious, the crystals acted not merely on the line of the pass, but over a broad strip up and down the hand, which action ascended all up the arm. Two months later, I tried Miss Reichel. This, to outward appearance, healthy and strong girl, possessed such sensibility to the crystal pole, that she perceived its approach even at considerable distances. Like her predecessors, she found the pass downward cool, upward warm, with the northward pole (—M); with the southward (4. M), on the contrary, t that downward warm, that upward cool. Lastly, I be- came acquainted with Miss Maria Atzmannsdorfer, and found in her a sensitive subject,9 who felt the pass of the crystals, strongest of all. Even little crystals of fluor spar, selenite, sulphuret of iron, an inch or so long, produced a sensation of ebld when passed down the hand: with rather thin acicular crystals, I could, so to speak, describe lines upon the hand; but the pass upward produced warmth of the hand, and so adversely upon her, that it affected her whole body unpleasantly, and began to produce spasms as soon as I repeated it.

35. As I was recounting all this to a friend, and, in order to show him distinctly how I had operated upon my patients, drew the same rock-crystals along over his hand, he looked at me with wondering eyes, and said that he himself felt the same that I had been describing to him of my patients, —the cool breeze, quite distinctly,—as often as I passed the point of the crystal over his hand. He was a strong healthy man, in the prime of life, who allowed me to name him openly, and to call upon him, as a witness,—Mr. Carl Schuh, a private gentleman residing here, well known for his great knowledge in natural sciences. After that, I made the experiment on all my own circle of acquaintance, and on many strangers, among whom were physicians, physicists, and chemists. I have permission to name especially among these, our renowned naturalist, Prof. Endlicher, chief of all the public botanical institutions. It appeared that not only my sick patients, but a great many other persons, shared these sensations, and that a large crystal of quartz, selenite, heavy spar, fluor-spar, and other substances, carried along sufficiently close over an open hand, produced, and rendered evident to the consciousness, in a tolerably large number of persons, certain peculiar sensations, which manifest themselves in the first place as heat and cold. This was equally the case when I previously heated the crystal to the temperature of the blood, to meet the objection, that the sensation might be accounted for by the radiation of heat from the hand to the stone. Many could tell me at once, with the face averted, whether I had made the pass over the hand with the positive or negative, i. e. with the weaker or stronger pole.

It results from all this, that the following laws exist in nature:—

  • A peculiar, hitherto overlooked force, resides in matter which, when the latter has taken the form of a crystal, appears effectively in the direction of the axes.
  • It manifests itself most strongly at the two poles, but differently, and in an opposite manner, at each.
  • Its effect agrees perfectly with that of the magnet, and the magnetic poles, in every case, where it is directed upon sensitive human organs.


36. In order to put every one in a position to repeat the experiments on his own acquaintance, I observe expressly, that a large free crystal, with a natural point, is requisite; larger in proportion as the person is less sensitive. Heavy spar, fluor spar, and selenite, are especially well adapted. It makes no difference whether the skin is delicate or coarse; I have sometimes found the roughest mechanic's hand more sensitive than the softest skin of a professional person. The point of the crystal must be carried slowly, as closely as possible without actual contact, sweeping from the end of the arm over the inside of the expanded hand, through the palm, and over the middle finger as far as the tip, at such a rate that one pass occupies some five seconds. The crystal is to be held perpendicularly to the surface of the hand. Among my own acquaintance I have found more than half the persons sensitive. I never told them what I had in view; I asked for the hand, passed the crystal a few times over it, and then asked whether any effect was felt, and of what kind? The answer usually was, a cool or a warm breeze. It need scarcely be mentioned, that this sensation is very delicate and fine; for, if it affected the hand so strongly as not to require any particular attention, it would not have remained to be discovered, and brought forward now, but would have been long since generally known. Persons who do not feel it one day often feel it the next, or the day after, or a week later. I met with a remarkable instance in my own younger daughter, Ottone. She always felt a large selenite crystal very distinctly, while her brothers and sisters could scarcely feel anything. She suffered for some time from head-ache, which gradually increased; at last she was obliged to lie down. Two days after, she was seized for the first time in her life with violent spasms, lay sick a fortnight, and then recovered. Now, however, she scarcely felt the selenite crystal at all; the attack of illness had wholly removed the sensitiveness to it. Thus this sensitiveness varied even in the same persons at different times, and with their state of health. Very frequently the sensation did not become evident at the first, but at the second or third pass. Sometimes a person felt the first pass most strongly, the second and third were not perceived, while with the fourth and fifth the sensation again distinctly presented itself. It would not do to make the pass too rapidly; the full action requires some little time. It occurred, also, that it preceded the crystal, and was felt at the points of the fingers when the crystal had only reached the palm of the hand; on the contrary, it only manifested itself distinctly in other persons, after the crystal had completely passed off the hand. In some places the eyes of the persons have been bound, and then varying statements have been received. This cannot astonish, after what has just been said; the answers will always be the same from sensitive persons; from persons but slightly sensitive they will be the most uncertain: the binding of the eyes places people in an unnatural and inquiet condition, so that their attention is divided and distracted, and the requisite calm for such delicate observations is usually wanting. If many persons are present, saying and asking all kinds of things, walking to and fro, and the agitation and distraction are increased, it is natural that the answers to the questions should be incoherent concerning a sensation which does not sweep over the hand like a wire brush. To many persons the reversed pass, from the hand upward toward the arm, is more evident than the downward pass. But some persons are absolutely insensible; and these perhaps are the healthiest. The one, the northward pole,10 usually acts more strongly than the other, the southward pole: the slight warmth is generally less perceptible than the coolness. It almost always contributes to increase the distinctness and strength when the hand is extended in the direction of the meridian, with the fingers directed to the south. Unfortunately, no further contacts may be allowed to exist during this, because they injure the delicacy of sensation, and divert the attention, which must be wholly concentrated here. It is worthy of remark, that this, like every other sense, becomes improved by practice. A person who never drinks wine, coffee, or tea, can seldom distinguish the different kinds of them; while a practised drinker discovers the slightest difference at once and distinctly. Mr. Schuh prepared for me in a short time series of crystals completely agreeing with those which the sensitive patients had formed. The same was speedily effected by Mr. Studer, a young man from Zurich, staying here, and his series agreed almost perfectly with that of Mr. Schuh.

37. Up to this point it was made out that in crystals resides a force of a polar nature, which they possess in common with magnets. It was next to be inquired whether this was of the same kind, and perhaps only quantitatively different, or was qualitatively different from that which we have hitherto understood by the term magnetism. If the former, it must be capable of being reduced to the same laws. It should attract iron filings, like not only magnetic nickel (chromium, manganium, cobalt11), but also oxidised bodies, even impure ores like magnetic iron-stone. Moreover, it ought in like manner, in quartz, selenite, &c., as it does in steel, not only to influence organic living bodies, but also convert bodies capable of becoming magnetic, such as steel, iron, nickel (cobalt, &c.), into magnets, when applied to them in the same way. When I dipped the polar end of my crystal into fine iron filings I could not detect any attraction. In order to have at my disposal the crystalline force, in its greatest possible strength, I bought the largest crystal that 1 could obtain, a prism of rock crystal from Gotthard, of eight inches in diameter, a six-sided colossus, with pyramidal ends, which I had some difficulty in using, and the action of which on the hand of the most sensitive of my healthy friends, Mr. Schuh, was so strong that he described it as feeling as if cold air were gently blown upon him through a straw. I placed a fine sewing-needle before this powerful crystal, and rubbed this with it in the same way as we do with a magnetic bar when desiring to convert it into a magnet. I made a dozen passes over it, and tried it with iron filings; it did not attract any. I repeated the passes more than a hundred times: but still it did not lift even the most minute of the iron filings. As a counter-experiment, I made a single pass over the sewing needle with the small magnetic needle which Miss Sturmann had found weaker than the little rock crystal previously applied to her, and it at once took up a long beard of filings from them. Therefore the points of the crystals could not inoculate the needle by rubbing, with a force capable of acting on iron. However, were this the case, it was still possible to excite such on it, after the manner of magnetic distribution, under the immediate influence of a crystal pole, and to render it capable of attracting iron filings in the same way that an iron rod is made to do so, by placing the pole of a magnet upon it. To try this, I attached a fine steel needle to the points of various large crystals, and dipped it, in this connexion, into filings. It did not lake up the least trace of them.

When I approached the polar points of any crystal, even of the great rock crystal, to the most sensitive suspended magnetic needle, they never disturbed it in the least; it remained motionless. On the other hand, I suspended a large crystal (free from iron), for instance one of selenite, by the middle, with a twisted, very fine, silkworm thread, so that it swung with its long axis horizontal, placed it under a glass shade, and laid a magnet quite close to it; but this exhibited no action, and no kind of turning occurred.

I wished to see whether a polar wire would act upon a suspended crystal as upon a magnetic needle. I arranged a small voltaic pile of a few elements, each of about ten square inches surface, and connected the poles by a stout copper wire. I then suspended a selenite crystal, free from iron, and about four inches long, by a silkworm thread, so that both poles were free to move in the horizontal direction. When approached to a horizontal part of the polar wire, the crystal and wire were indifferent, and not the slightest visible reaction took place.

40. It still remained to be investigated whether the crystal would induce a momentary current, like a magnet, when brought near a conducting wire. I formed a helix of about twenty-five turns of strong, covered copper wire, and connected it with the couplings of an extremely delicate Schweigger's multiplier, the well-known differential galvanometer: when I rapidly inserted into the helix a selenite or rock crystal, each of several inches long, the astatic needle did not exhibit the slightest divergence. When withdrawn the case was similar, the needle was motionless; the weakest magnetic needle that I substituted for the crystals, in a counter-experiment, immediately produced a divergence of twenty-five degrees.

41 . The relation to terrestrial magnetism was here a question of the greatest importance. We have some old researches by Hauy, Biot, and especially Coulomb, in which, not indeed the proof, but the possibility is made good, that all bodies may possess magnetism to some extent, or are capable of acquiring it. Those of Hauy, (Mem. du Mus. Par. 1817, p. 167) may be passed over. M. Biot, in his essay on this subject (Gilbert's Annal. v. lxiv. 395, 1820,) is uncertain whether it is magnetism; or, as he interrogatively expresses it, " some other analogous force," which acts upon bodies. But in this treatise also we find throughout only such bodies denoted as more or less evidently contain iron. An experiment was made with two silver needles, one of which was made of chemically pure silver, the other of silver which had been melted with iron, and which, as no trace of iron could be detected in it by chemical analysis, was also regarded as perfectly pure. But the latter acted 416 times as strongly upon the magnet as the former. It was thence concluded that this also must contain iron, even though it could not be detected chemically, and that, as a general rule, inconceiveably small quantities of iron are always sufficient to give a body the capacity to acquire magnetism; indeed, that, consequently, even the needle made of chemically refined silver must have retained traces of iron. The most detailed account of these matters was read by Coulomb, before the French National Institute, in the year 1802 (ext. in Gilbert's Ann. xii. 194): in this he left the question unsettled whether the bodies which he tried were free from iron or not, and Gilbert remarks, with reason, that they scarcely could be. The experiments consisted essentially in this: needles of about one-third of an inch long, suspended by silk filaments, were brought between the magnetic poles, and made to oscillate previously and afterwards. The number of oscillations in the same time was always smaller previously than when they were counted between the poles; and thus the effect of the magnet was indicated. But what effect? one must ask. And every one must see that it may be one of three kinds:-1. Dependent on the presence of iron in the bodies. 2. On the bodies themselves. 3. On " another analogous force:: as M. Biot conjecturally expressed himself. The decision of these questions, so far as they bear reference here, appeared to me to require a uew direct experiment. I possessed crystals, especially of selenite, which acted upon all the patients as strongly as a magnetic bar capable of supporting five to seven lbs. A bar of this kind, suspended by a common linen thread, invariably arranged itself in the direction of the magnetic meridian. If, then, the peculiar, equally powerful force, which resided in the crystals, were the same as that in the magnet, the crystal when freely suspended ought to arrange itself in the meridian. To ascertain this I freely suspended various crystals, free from iron, and in particular the selenite of two inches long, by a silk thread, three twenty-fifths of an inch long, and untwisted, just as it had been wound off from the cocoon, and I brought these under a glass shade. They stood at rest for several hours, but never in a direction toward the north, or indeed in any determinate direction whatever. When I turned the point of suspension a quarter of a circle, the crystal was also diverted ninety degrees after some hours' rest. I could thus bring it completely into any direction I pleased. Therefore not the slightest opposition to the force of torsion of the finest silk filament occurred, and the crystal force does not endow its conductor with the slightest directive power; it does not stand in any relation of direction to terrestrial magnetism.

Consequently, as on the one hand the behaviour of the magnet and of the crystal to animal nerves was exactly the same, so on the other hand, to iron, to the electric current, to the opposite poles of the magnet and to terrestrial magnetism, it was wholly dfferent.

It is therefore established that, the polar force which resides in crystals, and renders its existence manifest by sensuous excitations of a peculiar kind, in the healthy and diseased animal nerves is not identical with the magnetic force, as we at present know it. It does not attract iron, does not act upon the magnetic needle, is in its strongest concentration incapable of exerting the slightest power of magnetically attracting iron, in the smallest steel fibres, does not influence the polar wire when placed in the helix, does not produce any induced current, and does not obey terrestrial magnetism.

On the other side it holds good that, the magnetic force, as we at present know it in magnetic iron-ore and in the magnetic needle, is associated with that force which we have just become acquainted with in crystals. For since the magnet acts upon animal nerves in the same way as crystals, it possesses, in addition to its own properties, which are wanting in crystals, at the same time that force also which resides in crystals.
From which it further necessarily follows, that the force of the magnet is not, as has been hitherto assumed, single in its nature, but of two kinds, since to the older known one is now added a new unknown one, distinctly different from the former,—that of the crystal. It may appear divested of the other properties of the magnet, and in nature is displayed in a separate condition by the crystal.

The phenomena which the magnet presents may be divided therefore into two sections, which become complicated with each other in their manifestations; and it will he necessary to subject a portion of the great store of them which science has accumulated, to a process of revision.
I now instituted investigations as to the nature of these new properties of crystals. In the first place, I sought to make out whether this force might be transferred, conveyed, or accumulated? Whether, and what analogies, it possessed in these respects to magnetism and electricity, which can be conveyed, displaced, conducted, and concentrated. Since first of all I possessed no other magnet but the excited animal nerves of healthy and nervously diseased persons, while the excitability of the healthy persons I have hitherto met with is so weak that a distinction by degrees did not warrant sufficient accuracy, I was compelled to apply myself to the more acute sensations of the sick. For since the persons with whom I undertook the researches, placed in the most varied circumstances and suffering from different diseases, not only were consistent in their sensations, but also the statements they made, when arranged under a theoretical point of view, harmonized with each other, every reason existed to attribute value to them. I am fully aware of the objections I shall meet with here; but with the cautious naturalist, who keeps his certain steps within the boundaries of experience, they have no weight. All that we investigate of the outer material world we must, to the end, gather by our senses; we have no other instrument of perception.11 We count five senses and no more; but we are already sufficiently aware that things go on in nature, and, in fact, around and in us, which we are unable to detect, only because we possess no instrument for their perception. In every infinitely small interval of time countless electrical movements proceed around us; we do not perceive the slightest trace of them. If any one were to come down from the clouds who had a sixth, an electrical sense, with which he could detect and could describe the finest electrical changes around us, with the accuracy that we do the phenomena of light by means of our optical organs, should we not eagerly listen to his teachings, and ask him thousands of questions, to clear up and extend our knowledge? One born blind, who has never had a conception of light and colour, allows himself to be led by one that sees; and when be always finds the stone, by feeling, which the seeing guide had forewarned him of, he believes that the seer has eyes, which enable him to see things. Now, a nervous patient is one of this kind, in whom a sensitiveness for electrical and magnetic movements exists, and with which is unfolded to a certain extent a peculiar sense, so to speak, of which, as it will appear, the healthy are deficient. Among the nervously diseased, referable here, I do not mean directly somnambulists, sleep-walkers, &c., but, as a general rule, most persons who suffer violently from spasms. The somnambulists are only those in whom these disturbances of the normal condition of the nervous system have reached the highest degree, and in whom the excitability has reached its maximum. They give us the strongest testimony of the reactions, and show us the most delicate differences; but they are not absolutely necessary in the researches to which I devoted myself. Miss Nowotny, on whom I made my experiments, was far from being a somnambulist12 during the whole time of my six weeks' study; she only suffered from cataleptic spasms. Miss Maix never exhibited a trace of somnambulism. The surgeon, Mr. Schmidt, of Vienna, who experienced the most striking effect from the crystals and the magnet, as well as the terrestrial magnetism, was a young, otherwise perfectly healthy man, who merely was attacked by cramps in one arm for a short time, through exposure of one side to cold. And the sensitiveness might be thus traced onward to the healthy, who only felt the pass of large crystals upon sensitive parts, like a cool breeze. Finally, there was a further distinction even among these, that some felt the cooling strongly, others more weakly, some not at all.

If, therefore, all this stands in regular connection, cause and effect cannot be disputed away, and, in my opinion, it would not be well done to throw away results which may become so valuable a key for the investigation of truths of nature, in those branches of physics and chemistry where she seems to wish to conceal her mysteries from us most obstinately. The singular sense, the peculiar irritability of nervous patients, is chiefly directed to magnetic phenomena; they are an invaluable reagent while we possess no other. They are not vague sensations, as has hitherto been often believed, and as like those by which many physicians and visionaries have brought reproach upon themselves; but everything follows rule and law, and these are soon discovered, when one does but investigate them intelligently, trace them with the aids of physical and chemical knowledge, and apply to them the touchstone of experimental criticism.

I could not avoid this digression; it is indispensable to the definition of the stand-point of these researches. I now turn again to the questions, whether the peculiar force which displays itself in crystals is communicable, conductible, and condensible? When the most incongruous things, a piece of wood, a glass of water, leather gloves, paper cuttings, or any thing else, were rubbed with the pole of a crystal, every sick patient detected without delay, when placed before them, the difference between such and others which had not been rubbed. The sensation was sometimes a cool, sometimes a warm feeling, perceived by the hand in which the object was placed; and this gradually increased until it became unpleasant. The conveyance upon paper was found to be the weakest. Miss Sturmann did not feel a book which had been once rubbed with the Jarge rock crystal; often rubbed, scarcely at all. Finally, when I had held it for a time in contact with the point of the crystal, and at once quickly placed it in her open hand, she felt a slight warmth. A piece of porcelain touched with the crystal-point, felt cool to her. A German silver conductor of an electro-magnetic apparatus, when treated in the same way, she felt very warm. A piece of soft iron, a piece of a blue steel saw blade, a hard steel file, all at first found indifferent, produced a sensation of heat in her hand after the crystal point had been drawn over them. I placed my hand in her's, first let her get accustomed to it, then took it away, and drew it backward and forward a few times above the point of the great rock crystal, and then again laid it in her's: the patient at once felt a great difference; she now found it far warmer; and this apparent elevation of temperature decreasing, for more than four minutes, during which I repeatedly extended it to her for trial. A similar series of experiments were gone through with Miss Maix, and subsequently with Miss Reichel. The charge was here conveyed to copper, zinc-plates, linen, silk stuffs, and water. They gave wholly similar results. Miss Atzmannsdorfer perceived immediately whether the German silver conductor had been previously in contact with a selenite crystal or an amorphous body, and particularly whether with the warming or cooling end of a crystal the heat conveyed was stronger or weaker, or replaced by cold. The crystallic force may therefore be transferred or conveyed to other bodies. It may be transferred to iron and steel, and, at the same time, these bodies, so charged, do not attract iron filings, as I have already shown above.13

I endeavoured to ascertain whether this conveyance could be effected, like that of magnetism, by rubbing from pole to pole, or, like that of electricity, by single points. It proved to be indifferent whether I rubbed the object in the direction of its length, or kept any point whatever for a short time in contact with the point of the crystal; the warmth or coolness thus produced were not found to differ. A large crystal, when the point was applied to a glass of water, produced magnetized water, as well as a horse-shoe magnet.

46. The question now was, whether a coercive power existed in matter, whether this charge was persistent or transient, and after what intervals of time? I charged various objects,—the German-silver conductor, the steel file, the soft iron, the piece of porcelain, and the book. The last soon lost its power. The piece of porcelain tried on Miss Sturmann retained it two minutes, the conductor five minutes, the iron the same, and the steel ten minutes. In this operation I did not take the objects in the free hand, but moved them backwards and forwards in a fold of paper; when the patient bad taken hold of them, I made her lay them down, and wait till the sensation which continued to thrill through her hand had disappeared. This required about a minute. Then I made her take the object up again, without having touched it myself, and continued thus until the sensations of heat or cold were no longer produced. From this it follows that the retention of the charge, under the above circumstances, is not, even at night, of long, but of short duration, and, indeed, at most of ten minutes; that the charge soon disappears again, and, unlike magnetism, it cannot be permanently ingrafted upon steel. Since the iron filings fall from an iron bar which has been placed within the sphere of distribution of the magnet directly and instantaneously when the magnet is removed, but here an effect of accumulation does occur, although but for a short time, the question must be answered thus: that some, even if weak, coercive power over the crystallic force does actually exist in all bodies, which for magnetism, so far as we know it at present by its polar effects, is not the case, since the coercive power, according to our actual knowledge, is limited to an exceedingly small number of bodies; in fact, according to the most recent researches, strictly to iron and nickel.14

47. Is the crystallic force capable of being isolated, arrested, or is it universally distributed through matter? The first experiments were made with Miss Sturmann, who, though sensitive to the magnetic excitement, was less clear in her perception of it as to the distinction between warmth and cold. When I placed a book upon her hand, and brought the point of the large rock crystal upon it, the hand felt nothing of it through the book. Since she had previously felt the approach of the crystal to the inside of the bare hand at a distance of 18 or 20 inches, while now the distance was no greater than the thickness of the book, that is, four-fifths of an inch, this experiment showed that a thick mass of paper was a substance capable of arresting, at least for a short time, the action of the crystallic force upon the nerves of this patient. A piece of deal board acted in a similar way, but less perfectly.15 After a short interval the alteration of temperature began to be weakly perceptible beneath it. Eight folds of printing paper soon allowed the force to act through them; four folds of woollen stuff scarcely offered any perceptible obstacle. A porcelain dish, lying in her hand, touched on the upper side with the point of the crystal, was felt to be cool when I turned it over after the contact. On the contrary, an iron plate gave a warm sensation, when placed on the hand, as soon as I brought the crystal near; when I put it in contact the effect was like a shock, ascending through the elbow-joint to the shoulder.16 Various metallic wires, held in the hand by one end and touched with crystal points at the other, gave sometimes warm, sometimes cool sensations, without exception. I placed one end of the German silver conductor in her hand, and placed the other end in contact with the point of a small crystal; the sensation of an alteration of temperature shot instantaneously from the hand to the elbow joint; when I operated in the same way with the large rock crystal, it ran up as far as the shoulder, and produced cramp-like sensations.

When I subsequently repeated the same experiments on Miss Marie Maix, action took place through all bodies without exception, only it was more rapid through metallic, more like a shock, so to speak, than with vegetable substances, tissues, &c., which required a short interval of time for the effect. I made experiments with wool, silk, glass, and zinc on Miss Reichel. The transmission through wool required a short moment of time in a cord 40 inches long; but with silk, glass, and zinc, it was instantaneous, and of immeasurable rapidity. My experiments on the very sensitive Miss Atzmannsdorfer furnished similar results; brass wire, the German silver conductor, glass tubes, leaden bars, platina foil, bar iron, gold threads, and copper plates, which I placed in her hand, were instantaneously traversed by the force which passed into them by contact with the crystal. The conclusion is, that the crystollic force acts through all bodies, but in different degrees.17 Paper, wool, and wood, render the passage difficult, at least for a short time; porcelain less so; silk and glass are perfect conductors. Metals permit the passage not only on actual contact, but in slight degrees even before the contact, on mere approximation; but on contact an immediate action ensues. So far as these preliminary tests allow of a conclusion, they indicate that the difference of conducting power of bodies depends less upon their nature than on their continuity. All tissues conduct worse than solid bodies; cotton and wool worse than wire, silk, &c. The completeness and rapidity of the conduction were experienced in different degrees by patients of different states of sensitiveness, in such a way that while to the more sensitive everything is permeable, with the less sensitive occur distinctions among the bodies in the degrees of the permeability by the crystallic force.

48. I still wished to test the magnitude of the capacity for being charged. I made passes and contacts on the conductor and the steel file a varying number of times. One pass acted evidently more weakly than several; but when I had occupied a minute in the charging, it attained a magnitude which, under the given circumstances, was insusceptible of further increase, at least of an increase of strength of the sensations of warmth and cold thereby produced on the hand of the patient; to which corresponded the frequently repeated trials of the persistence of the charge, which never endured more than about five minutes, however much time I might have consumed in it, excepting only on steel and water, where it was felt about ten minutes. The charge was not effected instantaneously, but increased during the contact for a short time, and then attained its maximum. This capacity for a charge was satisfied in a few minutes.18

49. In reference to the magnitude of the force and its relation to the size of the crystals, the experiments showed that a small crystal, from the size of a lentil to two inches long, if of gold, rock crystal, selenite, diamond, or hornblende, was weak, and only actively perceived in the reversed pass upward; that from this point the force increased with the size of the crystals. The exponent, of course, could not be made out as yet.19

50. The distinction of the poles, in reference to their power of affecting the nerves, was expressed by an opposition of cold and heat. Almost in every case the crystal produced cooling with one pole and warmth with the other when drawn over the hand. Miss Nowotny, and the surgeon Mr. Schmidt, in the upward pass felt, like the healthy, a cool pleasant breeze; in the downward pass a not disagreeable gentle warmth. I tried crystals of tourmaline, arragomte, rock crystal, selenite, and cleavage forms of Iceland spar and tellurium, on Miss Sturmann. All presented a stronger cooling pole, and a weaker warming one. This difference was very clearly marked with Miss Rcichel, who distinguished the poles of all crystals, even at some distance, by a sensation of cold and heat; and this with very great accuracy. As I have already mentioned, Miss Atzmannsdorfer felt it most strongly. But even healthy persons, e. g. Prof. Endlicher, as already mentioned, Mr. Studer, my servant Johann Klaiber, and others, distinguished the two poles of all crystals very accurately, even of very small ones. The opposition of the two poles of crystals, therefore, expressed itself upon the nerves at once by slight heat and cold. I shall hereafter detail some other contrasts.

51. The high degree of distinctness which the excitement possessed in sick persons is worthy of notice. Not only do they perceive it universally on the masses of bodies which are brought to them, but they clearly perceived that there are points at which the force is concentrated. Miss Nowotny pointed out to me very definitely, in every crystal, the spots where effective poles were situated, which she very quickly discovered with the tips of her fingers. In double crystals the axis always passes through the line of junction of the two crystals. Miss Maix, Miss Sturmann, Miss Reichel, and Miss Atzmannsdorfer, had the same power, in some cases with still greater readiness. Even Mr. Schuh and Mr. Studer accurately felt out the points on large crystals, and their observations all agree accurately with one another.

52. The crystal-electricity, as excited in tourmaline and other minerals by heat, does not exhibit any perceptible effect upon the nervous excitement produced by the crystallic force. I heated these bodies to different degrees, but they produced no evident modifications in the effects.20

53. Does the crystallic force stand in no relation of direction to terrestrial magnetism? Starting from the manner in which crystals are built up, one would be induced to conjecture that the two forces are really to a certain extent independent of each other. Whoever has seen a nucleated mass of quartz crystals broken into, in a mine, and noticed how they stand in all directions, cannot have overlooked that the entire cavity is clothed on all sides, above and below, with crystals whose axes are directed in every possible direction. But without going into a mine, this observation may be made at once in a cabinet of minerals, upon the well-known balls of chalcedony, the cavity of which, i. e. the nucleus, is clothed all over with crystals of quartz and amethyst: I have never been able to detect anything like an uniform direction. Other crystallizations, again, which are grouped in stalk-like heaps around a common central point, like natrolite, zeolite, mesotype, arragonite, pharmacolite, &c., form tubercular globules, the rays of which spread out in all directions, and no indications lead ns to imagine an influence or any kind of external directing force on their formation. Our own crystallizations, as they go on in our laboratories and manufactories, are in like manner usually altogether confused; prussiate of potash, alum, sugar of lead, sugar-candy, &c., deposit their crystals, in large vessels, without any choice of direction. This appears to agree with the indifference which free crystals observe towards the magnetic needle and the polar wires. On this side, therefore, the crystaiic force is independent of terrestrial magnetism, in reference to the direction of its structures.

54. Since now the crystallic force shows itself to be free from that attraction to inorganic substances which so remarkably distinguishes the magnet from all terrestrial things, it must, on the other hand, prove the more striking,—nay it seems to claim the highest degree of interest in natural science,—that it shares with the magnet the singular power of attracting living organic bodies. For as I have already minutely described, I saw the effect produced by the magnet upon the cataleptic Miss Nowotny, repeated when she was brought in contact with the points of large crystals. It contracted her hand, in some cases produced cramp, and attracted her hand to follow it, not so strongly as a large
magnet, but exactly in the same manner as a weak one. I am certain that if I had possessed a crystal large enough, her hand would have adhered to it, both in the unconscious and conscious state, just in the same way as it did to a strong magnet. This elective affinity of the crystallic force to attract living and not dead matter is the most extraordinary character it displays, and points to the powerful connexion in which it stands with the inmost essence of that which we call life, and respecting which, if I am not most grossly mistaken, it promises closely imminent and most important results.

55. In a former treatise I gave an account of the light which issues from the poles of a strong magnet. After that observation, it was very natural to imagine the possibility of the same at the points of crystals; indeed, there was great probability in the anticipation. I therefore instituted an experiment with the heightened vision of Miss Sturmann. A room was made as dark as possible; she entered, remained some time, till her eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, and then I placed before her the large rock crystal. She actually at once perceived a florae-like light over it, half the size of a hand, blue, passing into white above, remarkably different from the magnetic light, which she described as much yellower and redder. The experiment was repeated twice on the following night. In order to obtain as complete conviction as possible before Miss Sturmann came into the darkened room, I placed the large eight inches thick rock crystal upon a place which she could not be aware of. As soon as the obscurity was fully restored by shutting the door, she in every case immediately detected the place where the crystal stood, and saw the flaming light exactly the same in all these three experiments. She described it as somewhat resembling a tulip in shape, and beginning below with a curve directed outward, like one of the petals, or like a candle-flame, but then soon taking an erect position and rising to about the height of her finger's length. She again spoke of the colour as blue, passing into perfect white above, and in such a manner that isolated scattered streaks or filaments of a reddish colour ram up in the upper part of the white. The flame was moveable, in a waving and sparkling condition, and threw a light glare over the support on which the crystal rested, of the diameter of almost forty inches, just as a magnet had done, when flame-like appearance and light radiating from it could be clearly distinguished. From her I turned to Miss Reichel, and placed various crystals before her in the dark. She everywhere found the flaming appearances bright, surpassing those of the magnet in brilliancy of colour and regularity of form. The light was with her visible not only over the poles of the crystals, but even in the interior of their substance. She described the flame over the poles much in the same way as Miss Sturmann, but the appearances of light in the interior essentially different from this. She said that they were of peculiar, star-like forms, which assumed different shapes when the crystals were turned. It was evidently the crystalline structure of the stone, its lamination in different directions, which caused the production of luminous appearances and internal reflections, such as of course could not exist in this way in a steel magnet. She furnished me with drawings of the lights of large and small crystals, which represented most astonishing appearances. I reserve all the various magnetic luminosities, which I became acquainted with, to bring them together hereafter in a special comparison, and shall give figures of Miss Reichel's drawings of the crystallic luminosities with that. Miss Maix also, whose calm and accurate mode of observation I especially valued, for many nights that I left the great rock crystal upon her stove, beheld in her sleepless hours the beautiful spectacle of a whitish star, half the size of her hand, on the apiculated summit. Miss Atzmannsdorfer in all cases pointed out the luminous pole in the dark, in a number of different crystals, and placed them in a series for me, according to their strength.

Since, then, all the crystals, which I had subjected in such great number to the test, exhibited the same reactions in reference to that peculiar force, which they manifested at their poles, as occurred in its maximum in a large rock crystal, one is led to the conclusion that crystals in genera, like the magnet, emit a fine flaming light from their poles, usually invisible to healthy eyes, but seen by those of excited nervous patients, in whom all the senses exist in an unusually acute condition. I need scarcely mention that this bears relation to the luminous appearances frequently observed during crystallization itself by chemists, which have long found place in the text-books. The nature of these radiations has not yet been explained; they have generally been assumed to be electrical, because they look like such, but no direct proof exists. Prof. H. Rose, however, has lately shown that this light is not connected either with heat or electricity, since neither the air-thermometer nor the telescope is affected in the least when dipped in a crystallizing solution of substances which exhibit the highest known degree of evolution of light in the moment of crystallization; for example, sulphate of potass and soda (Poggend. Annal. LII. 443, 585). But now that we have become acquainted with the permanent luminosity of crystal poles, which at present exhibits no agreement with electricity, but indeed a great difference, it becomes highly probable that the said light is dependent, not on electricity, but on the evolution of phenomena of crystallic light, and that circumstances arise in the sudden conveyance of the molecules suspended in the fluids into solid crystalline bodies, under which the crystallic light becomes so concentrated as to be visible to common eyes. What this light is, which like sunlight beams continuously, without in the least diminishing the body from which it radiates, whether it is a vibration propagated in the surrounding fluids, I leave here untouched. We assume that the atoms, still more the molecules of matter, are polar; we regard them as the elements for the construction of the crystal. Is their arrangement into a large solid crystal; which again has its own polarity and is luminous at its poles, a sum of all these little polarities, and are its poles an expression of this, as the open poles of a voltaic pile afford the sum of the shares of electricity of all the individual elements? Is a crystal a pile for the crystallic force, as the voltaic is for the electrical? These are approaching questions reserved for further investigation; meanwhile the consistent observations here made, and often repeated, on five different sick persons, will soon find confirmation in other places and by other observers; only I caution them not to undertake the experiments with somnambulists in the sleep-waking condition, but either with others, not somnambulist, nervous patients, or, if none such can be found sufficiently sensitive, to take the somnambulists only in the awake, conscious condition, when their senses are clear; and not to make use of the sleep-waking condition at all, or at most solely for the control of the former. I have never employed the patients in the magnetic sleep or somnambulism in my physical investigations, but when in this condition have left them in the hands of their physicians, and contented myself with the position of a spectator. To prevent errors, I again remark, that when it is wished to repeat my experiments, the place must be completely darkened, so densely that even after a long stay in it, after one or two hours, no trace whatever of light can be detected; finally, the crystal must be very large, for mine, as I have already mentioned, was not less than eight inches thick, and proportionately long. With those, however, who are strongly sensitive, smaller crystals will answer the purpose, since Miss Reichel and Miss Atzmannsdorfer saw light issue from almost every crystal, especially from compounds of sulphuric and fluoric acids, which in all cases surpass rock crystal of the same size.

56. All these researches finally unite to show, that the peculiar force of crystals here developed, opens a new page in the book of dynamics,—that it certainly falls within the general laws of these, but possesses its special code, to study which, and bring their axioms to mathematical expressions, must be henceforth one of the tasks of physics. It will be above all desirable to find some universal inorganic re-agent upon it, to discover an instrument of detection and measurement, which shall free us from the often worse than painful dependence on sick persons, hospital patients, and unscientific persons of all kinds.21

RETROSPECT.

a. Every crystal, natural or artificial, exercises a specific exciting power on the animal nerves, weak in the healthy, strong in the diseased, strongest of all in the cataleptic.

b. The force manifests its abode principally at the axes of the crystals, most actively at its opposite extremities; it therefore exhibits polarity.

c. It emits light at the poles visible to acutely sensitively eyes in the dark.

d. In particular diseases, it attracts the human hand to a peculiar kind of adhesion, like that of iron to the magnet.

e. It does not attract iron, does not cause any freely moving body to assume directions referable to the terrestrial poles, does not affect the magnet, does not induce a galvanic current in wires, and consequently it is not a magnetism.

f. It may be charged and transferred upon other bodies by mere contact.

g. Matter possesses a certain coercive power over it, but only for a limited time, during which the transferred force disappears.

h. Matter has a power of conducting it, in different degrees, in proportion to the continuity of bodies.

i. The capacity of bodies to receive a charge is in direct relation to the strength of the crystallic force.

k. It expresses itself quantitatively different at the two poles; so that, like the magnet, it produces, as a rule, sensations of cold at the pole corresponding to — M, at the pole corresponding to + M of gentle heat. In regard to quantity the northward pole is stronger, the southward pole weaker.

l. Warming the crystal has hitherto produced no essential modification.

m. This force of crystals is contained in those exhibited by the magnet; it constitutes therefore a separable part of them, capable of being isolated.

 


Notes:

  1. I have seen two persons whose hands, when the individuals have been awake, could not be kept away from the poles of a powerful horse-shoe magnet presented to them at a distance of six feet. The attractive power of the magnet always induced these ladies to move the head and to incline the body forward. But I have witnessed the phenomenon of the attraction of the hands to a magnet in more than twenty cases of individuals in a condition of sleep-waking. A boy, aged 14, who occasionally came to my house in Wimpole Street, used to rush forward from a distance of six feet to a magnet with a ten pounds sustaining power; if I took off the armature while I sat opposite to him, the poles being directed towards him, he would fall asleep on his way to the magnet, and remain unconscious while his hand adhered to it. I must continue to regard the sleep-waking state as no obstacle to the conclusions arrived at by the Baron, and I look upon the facts in mesmerism as corroborative of the establishment of truths erroneously imagined to be arrived at in a condition of system non-mesmeric. The simple act of falling asleep may establish the existence of a tonic state of nerves, but that tonic state of nerves is not incompatible with acuteness of perception in perceptive organs—with acuteness of apprehension in intellectual organs—with extreme delicacy of conviction, refinement, and grace in the moral organs; and of great increase of sensibility and force in the organs of passion and desire. It is phrenology that must be studied to enlighten us on the relations of physics to the phenomena of vitality.
  2. Since the thing appeared far too strange, and stood too completely in contradiction to the known laws and powers of the magnet, for me to see my way clearly, I confess that, at first, doubts arose in my mind whether all was quite right here, and whether some intentional deception was not going on, however much this might stand in opposition to the visible manifest honesty of all around, and the respectability of the patient. I therefore took various measures of precaution,— bound up the eyes of the patient in the cataleptic state, operated in variously modified ways with the magnet, &c.; but the reactions were always the same. It will be necessary to mention here some of the tests to which I subjected the patient. Among others, I concerted with a friend, that while I stood beside the bed and observed the patient, he should stand at the other side of the stone wall against which the bed was placed, and at an appointed sign should alternately open and close with the armature a strong magnet capable of sustaining 90 lbs., keeping it directed toward the patient when open. It was easy to find the place of her head on the other side of the wall in the next room. Scarcely was the armature removed when the patient became restless, and complained that a magnet must be open somewhere, desiring that some one would look, and relieve her from the pain; for large magnets always caused her great uneasiness from over-excitement, while smaller ones were pleasantly cooling. The armature was replaced without her knowledge, and she became quiet again. When this was secretly repeated she became perplexed, and could not conceive the cause of this changeable uneasiness which seised her and left her again, just as if a magnet bad been turned towards her. The magnet had, therefore, acted through a stone wall without the patient being aware of its vicinity, exactly in the same way as it did when lying open before her, in correspondence with the known laws of magnetism, which penetrates irresistibly through all bodies. Lastly, the riddle was explained to her, and the experiment repeated with her conscious participation; every time the large magnet was opened it produced the same varying unnatural redness in her countenance as I had seen appear and disappear during the secret treatment. Another exceedingly well-selected test was undertaken by M. Baumgartner, well known in his former capacity of Professor of Physics, at a visit for his own satisfaction. When the phenomena with the magnets had been exhibited to him, and their strange effects upon the patient repeated one after another before his eyes, he took from his pocket a horse-shoe magnet of his own, which he told the bystanders, in the presence of the patient, was the most remarkable of all the magnets in his collection of apparatus, and that which had always proved itself the strongest; he was desirous, therefore, of knowing the strength of the action it would exercise upon the patient. To our astonishment, however, Miss Nowotny declared that she could not confirm this; on the contrary, she not only found it much weaker than any, even than the weakest of the magnets present, but it seemed to her almost without influence; she did not smell it, she did not taste it, it did not make her hot, and it did not attract her hand at all. M. Baumgartner laughed at our astonishment, and now told us that the horse-shoe, which was indeed his best magnet, had been deprived of its magnetism before he left home by friction in the reverse direction, and, therefore, its power had been reduced almost to nothing; that it, therefore, was little else than a mere plain piece of iron; in fact, it no longer evinced any attraction for its armature*. M. Baumgartner had desired to assure himself of the truth of all that took place here, and thus furnished us all with a new warranty of it. After such tests, of which I could mention others similar in their nature, I hope I shall not be required to give new securities for the truth of these things, the accuracy of which will, moreover, be sufficiently tested by itself in the course of that which I am here endeavouring to explain.—Author's Note.

    • Among several other remarkable instances in my own experience corroborating this fact, I may notice a striking case of a lady who felt very unpleasant effects when a powerful magnet, in my possession, happened to be in the room where she was present. It was accidentally upon my table one day that she came in, and seeing it she remarked that her constitution must have undergone a change, since she perceived that without inconvenience she could remain iu the room with that magnet; in fact it had been deprived of its magnetism.

  3. The Baron is most correct in this conclusion,—that in constitutions of a tendency to catalepsy "a distinct attraction occurs between the human hand and a magnet;" and he enlarges the proposition by the words, " in certain diseases." Now, what are these diseases? All affections of the nervous system which fall under a great class of those exhibiting proclivity to clonic spasms, may be considered as opposed to another of those evincing a tendency to tonic spasms. In the one set there is an attraction between the particles of nerve matter, and in the other there is a repulsion between those particles. In the opposite conditions of brain and nerves which obtain in sleep and in vigilance, we have illustrations of this idea. Constitutions vary according to degrees of tone and clone, and there are thousands of grades of these opposite states. If, in vigilance, tone gives a character to the frame, and is habitually carried to its extreme point short of sleep, with rigid spasm, the individual is in perfect health, and is in a condition bordering on that which is characterised by a want of sensibility to magnetic impressions. Remark the opposite extreme: hysteria,—ftagile frame, with debility and very delicate susceptibility to impressions. Inflict the poison of hydrophobia on the tonic individual, and the extreme clonic spasms are not long before they become evident. A reversal of polarities ensues, which makes the person more extremely susceptible than the most fragile hysterical female. The brain and nerves in tone are compact and tense; in clone, loose and wanting in firmness. In the course of a long mesmeric treatment, patients exhibit in some cases various phases in degrees of sensibility to impressions. The organs of the five senses may become more acute, and their powers exalted. The intellectual, the moral, or the lower animal nervous functions, according to the individual peculiarity of fabric, may be more strikingly manifested. A time arrives when tone assumes the mastery. Deep sleep, the best test of the progress towards tonic health, balances the relations between nerve and blood, and the patient is restored to a state of mind and body in which neither mesmeric manipulations nor powerful magnets have much more than the slightest influence in producing attraction or repulsion. The diseases, then, in which the magnet influences the hand by attraction towards it, are those in which a proclivity to clone preponderates, and in which a due course of mesmerism or magnets have not perfectly conquered this disposition.
  4. This is the subject which is the keystone of all the objections to the application of magnetism or of mesmerism to the human system. To shew that man is not a free agent is bad enough, but to prove it by physical facts should be atrocious. The instinct of those who have large organs of cunning, acquisitiveness, and self-esteem, is instantly on the alert; and forgetting that they do not wholly belong to the baser animals, they give way to the lower feelings of their nature.

    Instinctive feelings operate powerfully upon mankind as well as upon the animals not gifted with the organs of the reasoning faculties, and the condition of the brain of the man who anticipates disagreeable change, or something adverse to his foregone conclusions, is just that which is analogous to the magnetised brain which has no free will. The being of prejudice with his very limited power of understanding is, of necessity, no free agent; he is not more so than the tiger, who, following the law of his organization, flares his eyes with ecstatic delight while he mangles his prey. It is the decree of such that Man is not to know of his brain being influenced by external agencies. With a penalty before him, the risk of disease, or of death, he may be permitted to indulge in the dead-drunkenness of chloroform, of opium, or of brandy, in its many shapes, for then he is not placed in those gradations which excite in his fellow man the reasoning faculties. Sinners have free will, and are accountable beings, even when drunk; but a man rendered fatuous, ecstatic, or unconscious by a magnet, is too evidently a being without a will. There are various degrees of the influence exerted by magnets on the brain. It is not a necessary consequence that unconsciousness should accompany the catalepsy which results from this agency. A man may be quite conscious, and yet be unable to exercise will: or the organs of his brain, influenced by a force analogous to the magnetic power, may be placed in a condition such that the individual is unable to act, except at the bidding of another. Apparently there are other influences, but a stricter study of the philosophy of this subject will show us that they are really what were formerly called magnetic, but which Reichenbach's discoveries will establish as crystallic or mesmeric, operating upon the brain of man, and obliging him to form convictions, to do deeds, that prove him as much a machine without free will as if he had actually been the victim of the Baron's largest magnets. All influences, all impelling forces, acting upon the phrenological organs of man, are motive powers. Do we not in common parlance speak of the influence of motives? No one acts without a motive: so that the immediate antecedent motive or force is the necessary impellent to the production of the consequent action. The will of the Jesuit, like that of the snake persuading Eve, is as much an overpowering magnetism as the flames from the light-spreading magnet: they both act by an influence of attraction. The serpentine luring is attractive, like the rattlesnake's, to destruction, to arrieration, and perdition. The magnetic light, a symbol of Baron von Reichenbach's illumination against superstition, attracts to the establishment of health—the parent of many blessings. But in each case the victim is the creature of a necessity. To speak of his free will is an absurdity. He is trained to his actions as much as a vine is trained against a wall to grow in a direction about which it has no choice. The Negro victim to the superstition of Obi is in a magnetic groove, in which he runs his course and dies. Then, is man in all his actions to be considered as a machine obeying the impulses received upon his brain from the thousands of crystallic forces that are playing upon him incessantly? Look at him proceeding along a crowded thoroughfare;—is he not receiving from a plane below the axis of the sphere in which his brain may be supposed to be placed, a constant series of varied impressions, acting in the sense of the centrifugal forces, which are repellent and have the tendency to keep him awake and thinking? and his thoughts under such circumstances, are they not without his control forced upon his attention? A carriage goes over a child;—can he help the start of sympathy? He could have helped it, if . . . if he had had other motives offered to him, more powerful than those which obliged him to act as he did; but the impulse he received had its legitimate consequences. Regard him under the influence of centripetal forces. They are, like the large magnet, attractive. He is so fatigued he cannot keep his eyes open. Does his free will prevent him from sleeping? The attractive forces are too much for him. All resistance is in vain. He yields, and he sleeps.

    Will man never learn the principle upon which all real charity depends! Will man always acknowledge that he is truly the victim of the power of surrounding circumstances, and yet constantly act towards his brother man as if he were free to command the events that control him I Glorious Von Reichenbach ! the lights that emanate from your magnets, from your crystals, and from your crystalline brain, are destined to aid in liberating your fellow-beings from their irreligious thraldom of superstition.
  5. This has been witnessed here very frequently, and we consider the patient to be in a deep mesmeric sleep, with the addition of strong spasm. In my paper on the Theory of Sleep (see the Zoist, Vol. 4, pages 260 to 267, passim) I have endeavoured to show that however the cerebral tissues may be arranged to produce results analogous to those caused by our artificial electric and magnetic agencies, attractive forces tend to soothe the individual, and, by degrees, induce quietude, somnolence, sleep, and the tonic spasm; while inquietude, pain and restlessness, wakefulness, full vigilance, delirium tremens, clonic spasms, result from repulsive forces. To illustrate the facts here stated, cases analogous to those selected by the Baron should be chosen; but the confusion ought not to arise in the mind that the individuals do not exhibit mesmeric phenomena. Brown study, reverie, absence of mind, are slighter degrees of the state exhibited in Miss Nowotny's case, and are to be produced by a magnet in some individuals.
  6. These admissions are the proofs of the greatness of Von Reichenbach's mind. This man must have a large brain, with well-developed organs of causality, comparison, and conscientiousness. The facts stated in this and the next paragraph have been exhibited in my house hundreds of times. Water has been magnetized with magnets, mesmerised by the fingers, by breathing, by the exertion of the will: over and over again, the tumblers in which these specifically treated quantities of water have been contained have been instantly detected by somnambulists in the lucid state of sleep-waking, who have been in another room when the fluid was charged; and yet most absurd nonsense has been talked by even Fellows of the Royal Society, let alone those of other scientific or learned bodies, as to the impossibility of the phenomenon. " I won't believe it," and " I would not believe it if I saw it," has been a very common mode of expression with these wise leaders of public opinion. It would be a glorious immortality for them to hand their names to posterity, with a proper measure of the circumference of the head of each individual. But Mesmer, Gall, and Reichenbach will be remembered when they are forgotten.
  7. I am clear that when these experiments are repeated, many modifications of their results will be found according to the degrees of susceptibility in the individuals selected for the experiments. I have found some cases in which glance-cobalt, rock-salt, and rock-crystal, not only caused the hand to close upon them convulsively, but attracted it so powerfully as to produce an appearance of fatuity in the patients who followed the articles in my hand about the room iu order to grasp them with avidity. The attraction of these and many other substances which act energetically on certain individuals, induces a desire of possession of the object which amounts to ecstacy. The consummation of desire constituting temporary fatuity . . . Orgasm.
  8. All crystallized matter is essentially and ultimately composed of globular, spherical, or spheroidal molecules; and by a number of simple experiments which I have performed on some very impressionable cases, I have been led to the conclusion that all gaseous and fluid bodies are susceptible of a submission to those laws which regulate crystalline forms of matter. Reasoning on the Baron von Reichenbach's facts, and having previously arrived at certain analogous conclusions before I had seen Professor Gregory's abstract of his researches; from reasoning, too, upon the facts in Petetin, upon the facts detailed by Tardy de Mon-travel, and by De Pnysegur and Deleuze, and especially on the influence of magnetized or mesmerized water, examples of which influence in the sense indicated by the older writers as well as in that of our author I had seen some hundreds of times, I arranged a number of finger-glasses varying from three to twelve, containing always the same description of fluid, whether it was water or a solution of some salt in water. These I connected together by means of cotton moistened in the contained fluid, and then passed a current of electricity through it. A few minutes of the current from a dozen of Smee's plates ten inches by five, sufficed to give the fluid properties which it had not before possessed to so striking an extent. Plain water treated in this manner was taken from the current into another room, into which were separately introduced one of six, eight, or sometimes ten patients awake. Plain water not electrised was at the same time introduced to the notice of each, separately, of the same individuals. The effects were very remarkable, for the degrees of impressionability of the subjects were clearly brought out; not one was affected by the unelectrised water, and the electrised water produced different degrees of attraction of the hands or of the head in each patient, and each, in different periods of time, varying from half a minute to five minutes, fell into a deep sleep, the fingers being in the fluid. Electrified solutions of four neutral salts— sulphates of magnesia, soda, and potass, and nitrate of potasa, in each caused almost immediate deep sleep, while unelectrised solutions were weaker in effect, varying the access of sleep from three or four minutes to twelve, and in two cases there was no sleep at all, although the taste of the salt was perceived in the mouth. I inferred that the electric current had established a polar arrangement of the molecules of these fluids which developed the Baron's new force, since, like mesmerised water, each was easily detected by the impressionable persons, and each was attended with mesmeric consequences.

    Some common air not electrised was contained in a bottle, and the stopper being removed, the wide mouth of the bottle was applied to the nape of the neck of a highly susceptible patient. No perceptible effect. Into the same bottle removed into another room, an iode and a cathode were introduced, and the air was electrised. Now the application, as before, of the open month of the bottle, was productive of deep sleep and rigid spasm:—both quickly dispelled by the application of unmagnetised iron.

    A wooden, a porcelain, and a glass tube were successively used in four cases, selected for their very delicate impressionability, for the following experiment. One extremity of the tube was held close upon the organ of sympathy, without touching it. I blew through the tube, and deep sleep with rigidity immediately supervened. The tube was turned, and the other extremity was held at a little distance from the organ of sympathy. The patient wakened up, the muscles slowly relaxing. The tonic result was more rapid than the clonic. This experiment having been frequently repeated with the same results upon four different individuals, I inferred that the air blown through the tube in one direction had a polarity among its molecules diametrically opposed to the polarity acquired by the molecules of the air passing soon after through the same tube. If any of the tubes were laid down for a few minutes, it beoame indifferent which end was first used.
  9. I borrow the term " sensitive," for magneto-physiological reaction, from vegetable physiology, in which plants of definite irritability —such as certain Mimosas, Berberis, Norma, Hedysarum, &c., are called " sensitive," in distinction to " sensible," belonging to the theories of animal life, which, as is well known, involve a more general idea.—Author.
  10. On account of the difficulty of language, to name the poles of magnets in contrast to the poles of the earth, in so far that the latter posens a magnetism of the reverse direction to that of the oscillating needle, and in order briefly to dismiss all circumlocutions and misconceptions, I shall in this work name that pole of the needles which freely turns to the north, the "northward pole" (gen Nordpol), and that which points to the south, the "southward pole" (yen Sudpol). These terms will perhaps be found fault with here and there; but in their compressed brevity, they will everywhere be readily understood. Even in the newest German text-books of physics, those just issued from the press, that of MM. Pouillet and Muller, and that of M. Baumgartner, the terms are in direct opposition; and what the former called north polar, the latter speaks of as south polar. That the German and French on the one hand, and the French on the other, have long used opposed expressions, is otherwise well known. Hence results difficulty and confusion, and this may justify the proposition of an expedient.—Author's Note.
  11. Even with the veneration that attends our regard for such clearness and power as are in every page evinced by the philosophical author, occasions arise to strike us with wonder that he has not studied the great work of Gall, the doctrines of which would have given so decided a direction to his extraordinary powers, that passages like those in the paragraph above could not have escaped from his pen. It is most true that in every infinitely small interval of time, countless electrical movements proceed around us, but if we study the phrenological structure of our beads, and apply the experience which numerous trials with crystals have given us, we shall easily arrive at the conclusion that the pointed end of a rock crystal, or of selenite, or of sulphate of alumina, or of nitrate of potass, or indeed of many more which have been tried, applied to the attractive organs of the brain, will excite the individual to actions agreeable to his neighbour, while the same termination applied to a repulsive organ of the brain will excite the victim to an action disagreeable to his neighbour. This is not a simple matter of theory. Numerous repetitions of the experiments have established the matter of fact. Take, for instance, a female of impressionability in a condition of lucid somnambulism: apply to her organs of adhesiveness or of pure affection the points of rock crystals, and she is excited to the tenderest manifestations of pure affection. Change the direction of the crystal., point to amativeness, and the woman, if her organs are at all full, is unable to control ber actions. She burns with desire. Reverse the ends of the crystals, the feelings are calmed, or perhaps the reaction is attended with head-ache. Blowing or breathing on the organs equally dispels the feelings. Now try the points of the crystals on the organs of self-esteem—most repulsive organs, and the woman becomes imperious, angry, egotistical, and desires you to stand off, for she detests you. Does all this power reside in the optical axes of crystals? The Baron von Reichenbach has beyond all doubt established the existence of a force residing in the principal axes of crystals, and the manifold relations of this great fact have yet to be fully developed by thousands upon thousands of experiments. If these crystals can excite the organs of the brain in man, and can oblige him to act according to the impulse he has received, is he not the victim of impulses? " Electrical and magnetical movements!" What are crystals but spherical or spheroidal molecules arranged by electrical currents according to determinate laws of aggregation? What are those globular molecules but imitations of the spheres which occupy space, each having its polarity, each its north and south, its east and west; each its magnetic, each its diamagnetic relations. If the crystals of Von Reichenbach can excite these phenonomena, they can do much more. Many an impressionable individual may be put into a profound sleep by pointing such crystalline apices to the eyes, and awakened again with rapidity by applying the positive or butt end of the crystal to the eyes or to the pit of the stomach. I have done this upon numerous patients hundreds of times. Some individuals are so easily impressed, that I have often put them to sleep with the point of a small crystal of Epsom salt, and as often awakened them with the fiat end. This force of molecular arrangement suggested to me some experiments on very susceptible patients, the details of which ought to be full of interest to philosophical physicians, for they open up fields of inquiry that should lead to the modus operandi of all medicinal agents. I dissolved different neutral salts in water, and experimented upon one at a time. I took chloride of sodium first; and a solution of this substance being poured into ten finger-glasses, they were connected together by cotton moistened in the solution, and a couroune des tasses was completed. A current of electricity from four of Smee's elements was passed, and sensitive persons, who could be readily put into mesmeric sleep by crystals, were desired to put the fore-finger into one of the glasses so as to allow it to be moistened by the solution. In the first trial, seven young women tried the experiment. In different periods of time, varying from half a minute to five minutes, each fell into mesmeric sleep, previously complaining of a strong taste of brine in the mouth. The next trial was with a solution of sulphate of alumina. Sleep came on in each case, varying from one to three minutes. Each tasted alum in the mouth. Two had intense head-ache. These in the next experiment I placed first for trial. The solution was nitrate of potass; the taste of which was very cooling and agreeable. Sleep did not supervene in one for four minutes; in the other for seven minutes and a half. Some of the others slept more quickly, varying from three to six minutes. The nitre cured the head-aches. Sulphate of soda, of magnesia, of potase, were tried separately; then together. Sleep in a comparatively short time. In some, weight about the head; in others, head-ache. These results made me try the effects of various substances in solution. In one trial with sulphate of copper, finding fearful sickness and ulceration of the month, which was cured with great difficulty, I was induced to reflect on the danger of such trials with poisonous metallic salts; and I left off for a time, inferring that mercury might be advantageously employed where ptyalism was desired by these means of operating. I had already in several cases of somnambules made the mouth very sore, and induced salivation, by simply placing a minute globule of mercury in the palm of each hand; establishing, by producing the rigid spasm in the first place, the dictum of my two revered masters, Abernethy and Macartney, that mercury, among its many properties, was, judiciously applied, a tonic medicine. The further reflections on the influence of two poles of crystalline agency led me to pass currents of electricity through baths, which I afterwards found more extensively and ingeniously applied by Mr. Tylee, of Bath. The first experiments I tried were on myself. The currents being passed from the head towards the feet, the bath was tonic and exhilarating; but being induced on one occasion to try the current in the inverse direction, I had a most intense head-ache. Mr. Tylee, and Mr. Bagshaw, at Bath, have had great success in the treatment of intractable forms of disease by means of this agency. We are as yet but at the threshold of the practical applications of this subject. In every point of view, the existence of the force which Von Reichenbach has established is a vast advance upon our old stock of knowledge. There is, to the reflective mind, no limit to the relations which the force he has indicated has to all the objects in nature.
  12. It is clear that though these patients were not somnambulists, not in that which Dr. Elliotson calls the sleep-waking state, they were in the deep mesmeric sleep, of which the other is only a condition. In the hands of an experienced mesmerist, Miss Nowotny would not have failed to exhibit an immense number of phenomena known as mesmeric phenomena. I dispute not the Baron's right to establish a stand point; but while I yield to him the deep respect which is due to so philosophic a mind, I regret to observe his tardy acceptance of the truths to every one of which he will be obliged on enlarged experience to yield his assent. Without mesmeric sleep, the Baron's are just the cases which could not fail to convince him of the truths of Gall's phrenology. H a fingers applied on their heads to Gall's organs for a short time, would produce manifestations that could not fail to strike such a mind as his that he has been making distinctions without differences, while he has bestowed the sneering remarks in the above paragraph on the physicians who have brought reproach on the philosophy of magnetism. Every thing does "follow rule and law;" but these rules and laws are to be traced by all the lights that can he brought to bear upon them, and when certainty cannot be attained in science at first, we must be contented with probability. When we cannot establish a theory, we must satisfy ourselves with the amusing haziness of an hypothesis. If we, at last, arrive at the truth, we shall not regret the toil it has cost us, albeit much of it has been devoted to stem the torrents of prejudices, and the foregone conclusions directed against us.
  13. The Baron very satisfactorily establishes his positions. But I have tried all these experiments with great care on impressionable patients, and have frequently been disappointed in the results. I have repeated them on somnambules, and have found every one of them come out as above described. Then I am bound to value the testimonies afforded by good sleeping-waking persons. I am often told that confusion arises from the use of such cases. Yes, in the hands of bother-headed persons, confusion naturally takes place; but with due precautions the results obtained are far more interesting, because more definite. Having prepared a case for such experiments as those detailed above in the case of Miss Sturmann, I passed the pointed end of a rock crystal on a smooth deal board, on a piece of writing paper, on the bound leather cover of a book successively. Each in turn was offered to the right hand of the patient, Miss J. D., who had been eight times put into a state of placid sleep, undisturbed by the influence of other mesmerisers. Each object felt warm and agreeable. I repeated the crystalline applications a dozen times on each object; the effect was to make the patient smile contentedly, and to place the hand eagerly on the object: at last, by repetitions of the experiment, the sleep was deepened. Now I applied the opposite pole of the crystal to the board, the paper, and the book successively, and the patient being in a deep sleep, the hand was gently laid upon the objects in turn. First, from the deep sleep, the state of sleep-waking took place, and the hand was speedily drawn away from each object as if it were disagreeable; and on being asked as to the nature of the sensation produced, she said it was cold, and made her chilly all over. I repeated the application of this repulsive cud of the crystal many times to the paper, and on each renewed application of I endeavoured to ascertain whether this conveyance could be effected, like that of magnetism, by rubbing from pole to the hand the sensation became more unpleasant, and at. last the patient woke up suddenly. A piece of porcelain touched with the pointed end of the large rock crystal was warm and agreeable to her, but did not put her to sleep. I held the point of the crystal to the forehead; she fell deeply asleep instantly. I touched the porcelain cup with the blunt end of the crystal, passing it a dozen times, and then touched the fingers of the right hand with the cup: the hand was hastily withdrawn, with an exclamation of "don't—it is like ice." The patient had instantly passed into sleep-waking. The iron poker was treated with the pointed end of the crystal, and the application of it to the hand deepened the sleep. The same result took place when it was applied to the nape of the neck. When the opposite end of the crystal was applied, the iron being well charged with the crystallic force, the patient on feeling it got up suddenly wide awake. A three-cornered file, and a pair of large polished scissors, similarly treated, produced identical effects. To detail the repetitions of the experiments on this patient, and on two others where identical results were obtained, would be tedious. Insisting upoin the fact which Dr. Elliotson's experience has fully established, and which mine and that of several other experienced students in mesmerism sufficiently corroborate, that no phenomenon is observed iu artificially induced mesmeric states which has not occurred in Nature, I am induced to draw attention to some cases in which the polar relations would appear to be reversed. In general, when I took the hand of a patient mesmerised into sleep by myself, with a piece of pure gold, in a longer or shorter time, according to circumstances of impressionability, the hand and arm became rigid. If I apply the gold to the nape of the neck, the whole body becomes rigid, and the sleep is so deep that the patient is insensible to all impressions. If, in this state, any of the metals easily oxidable are applied to the same spot, the sleep and rigidity in times varying according to circumstances are dissolved, and the patient is restored to the vigilant and conscious state. I have performed analogous experiments with different metals hundreds of times; but I have occasionally met with cases of a high degree of impressionability, in which most unexpectedly the phenomena were nearly all reversed. By the induction of the rigid state with gold and platinum, I have repeatedly cured menorrhagia in females. A married woman, aged 23, with dark hair and eyes, highly nervous temperament, afflicted with passive hemorrhage, occurring for a fortnight at each catamenial period, was mesmerized easily into a sleep-waking state, in which she remained quiet and comfortable for a couple of hours each morning for a week. She was cured, and remained well for four months. The vexations arising from questions relating to a drunken husband made her suffer much from headache, and I applied a disc of pure gold to the back of her neck. Instead of sleep and rigid spasm increasing, she was affected with the clone of hysteria, and sudden passive haemorrhage. I applied soft iron to the neck and soles of the shoes, and in half an hour she was quite well, and in high spirits. I persuaded her to come the next day, and put her to sleep by passes, after which I applied a disc of platinum to the nape of the neck. The same results as with gold immediately supervened. Waking up suddenly, she became very hysterical, and haemorrhage quickly came on. The cure was just as soon effected as before, by the application of iron to the neck and soles of the feet. The general conclusion at which I have arrived, that all attractive agencies tend to produce a state of nervous system favouring tone, and that all repulsive agencies tend to produce an opposite state favouring clone, was here subverted by an exception; but what does it evince? only that cases exist in which the relations to the metals, and to the poles of crystals, are directly the reverse of those usually met with. I have seen two other cases, in which, though not identical, yet very analogous facts were exhibited, in which the pointed extremity of crystals induced wakefulness and headache; while the blunt or butt end being offered to the eyes or to the pit of the stomach, deep sleep was immediately brought on; in which magnetised water induced no attraction of the hand, and in which the presence of a powerful magnet brought on hysteria and headache; but no subsequent rigidity or sleep. They were of a nervo-bilious temperament, liable to frequent attacks of nervous and sick headache.
  14. Written a year before the recent researches of Mr. Faraday. Author.
  15. The crystallic force, residing most probably in the optical axis of the crystal, since it has so close a relation to light in some form, in producing sleep and vigilance, according to the pole of the crystal offered to the face or pit of the stomach of a very impressionable subject, has been demonstrated here very frequently. I have seen cases in which the pointed end of a large rock crystal has, by being presented in the direction of the individual, whose back has been turned to the operator, induced sleep instantly at the distance of 42 feet. The other end immediately caused wakefulness; and in this manner sleep and wakefulness were alternated just as often as the crystal was turned round. But even in less susceptible cases, the point of a rock cratal would, with its attractive or repulsive pole to the individual, itiduce sleep, and the other pole would awaken. Often and often has the experiment been satisfactorily performed by an operator going into one room, leaving the patient in the adjoining apartment, separated by a partition of deal wood painted, which was covered on one side by prints framed and glazed. As often as the respective ends of the crystal were held towards the patient, instant sleep or instant vigilance were produced. Any person standing in the door-way, so as to observe both the operator and patient, could at once see that there was no possible source of fallacy in the experiments. Many patients have been submitted to the teat of this experiment, and the results have been identical.
  16. These experiments I have repeated on somnambules with precisely the same results; but in sleep-waking persons, as in those quite wide awake, there are many varieties in the degrees of susceptibility. A piece of cylindrical wood has been held in the two hands of a sleep-waking patient; it has been touched with the pointed ends of a rock crystal; immediately the wood has been strongly grasped by the patient, in some cases with, and in some without, the shock being experienced, but deeper sleep has supervened. The opposite end of the crystal touching the wood, wakefulness has taken place, and the piece of wood has dropped from the relaxed fingers. If an iron rod, of the diameter of an inch and a half, has been used instead of the wood, the sense of shock up the arms has been more decided, and some have complained of its burning the hands. Some have slept only more deeply. The law regulating the results I believe to be dependent upon the presence of attractive and repulsive agencies exercised by the crystals.
  17. A just conclusion, strongly corroborated by numerous facts observed in the course of experiments on sleep-wakers.
  18. The same conclusion is arrived at in relation to charging bodies with the mesmeric fluid. Water holds only a definite charge, according to the concurrent testimony of many lucid sleep-waking individuals, taken at separate times. Thus, I have darted my fingers two hundred times on the surface of a tumbler of water, and have been told that the blue haziness has overflowed the tumbler. Several persons have said precisely the same thing. In mesmerizing a decanter of water, I have placed a watch before me while I held the tips of my right-hand fingers in the month of the decanter. Several lucid individuals have separately indicated the precise height of the blue haze in the water at the same interval of time. A few minutes were sufficient to charge a quart decanter. All concur in the fact that the fluid sinks in the water. Is it, then, imponderable P Has it not a specific gravity?
  19. Experiments in sufficient numbers are wanting to determine the relative powers of dissimilar crystals. There is no doubt of the crystalline force being, cteteris paribus, augmented in a ratio to the volume of the same kind of crystal; but the force will be found to vary much in power according to the nature of the constituent substances of the crystal. Clear rock crystals are more agreeable to patients than fatty crystals. A rock crystal containing titanite was disagreeable, but it put patients into a deeper sleep than the clearer specimens. A very small crystal of cobalt is more powerful than a large rock crystal. In highly susceptible cases, the pointed end of a very small crystal of Epsom salt held to the forehead or to any part of the face has been sufficient to induce sleep immediately, and wakefulness has been speedily produced by holding the opposite pole of the same substance in the same direction. A crystal of morphine held in the same man. ner has been attended with the same results, but accompanied by headache. " The opposition of the two poles of crystals expressed itself upon the nerves at once by these striking contrasts."
  20. I have coiled copper wire enclosed in silk thread round eight large rock crystals, and have thus produced an instrument like an electrodynamic coil, furnished with a platinum keeper. The crystallic force was not increased in the least perceptible degree, nor have I found the crystallic force modified by heating or cooling crystals. As mesmeric sleepwakers of high susceptibility are so much more delicate than any person awake can possibly be, the testimony derived from experiments on these must be powerfully corroborative of the Baron's conclusions.
  21. The reflection that it would be desirable to find such a reagent is natural. It is not so difficult to measure heat, light, electricity, and magnetism. These are agencies that are common to inorganic and organic matter. But it is a question whether it is easy to devise a test for a force owing its existence to a combination of molecules that constitutes an organic arrangement, which in its own nature shall not be organic. Is it possible to find an inorganic test for an organic force? We may probably, by tracing the laws regulating organic forces, be enabled to find out the means by which the human being can be stimulated to become so highly sensitive as to detect the presence of very subtle re-agents, odours, metallic lodes, streams in the bowels of the earth, but it may be problematical whether, per contra, we shall be able to frame an inorganic instrument sufficiently delicate to detect thought, the impulses of ambition, hate, or cunning; the bewitching influences of love, benevolence, veneration, or conscientiousness. These depend upon organization; upon arrangements of living matter, so distributed in the brain as to have their own attractive and repulsive relations, but having no corresponding antagonistic forces in inanimate matter. In order to study the physics of organic arrangements, we must lay aside our repugnance to the numerous delicate phenomena offered to us in organic nature, and be content to enlarge, though in a degree hazily, our bounds of enquiry, paying respect to classes of facts that appear, and appear to proud ignorance only, the creations of fancy. Phrenology teaches us the causes of the philosopher's repugnance to new classes of ideas. Mostly, it is to pride that he is indebted for his refusal of truth, and the silly institutions of society foster and encourage the acquisitive, the approbative, and the pride-creating organizations of man to habituate him to a love of contempt, and an adhesion to errors and fallacies. A most eminent Professor, justly celebrated for much that he has nobly wrought in science, was heard to say openly before a large audience, " Had I been sharp, I should have hit upon the discovery on which my competitor has stumbled:" by no means ashamed to acknowledge publicly, that he did riot rejoice in the success of a fellow-labourer, who had poured the blessings of a new truth on mankind, to elevate the thoughts, to exalt the aspirations of beings whose organizations improve by an indulgence in noble aims. However vulgar and absurd, because perhaps not severely exact, to habitually erroneous thinkers themselves, may appear much of the knowledge floating among boors and peasants, a very remarkable proof of the importance of some of it may be traced to a singular though rude anticipation of a part of the most brilliant of Professor Faraday's discoveries on magnetism and diamagnetism, by means of an instrument, the name of which has been sufficient to excite the contempt of some so-styled swans of repute. If knowledge be not in the range of the thoughts of certain severe cogitators, it is then, forsooth, no knowledge at all. The unmerciful contempt which has been cast on the divining rod—virgula divine, or baguette divinatoire—by certain cultivators of science, may be estimated by a reference to the earlier editions of a translation, by Dr. Hutton, of Moutucla's improvement of Ozanam's Mathematical Recreations, a book full of most interesting matter. In the last edition of that work, however, Dr. Hutton proved himself to be, what he always was, a sincere lover of truth. Led into error at an earlier period, he was open to inquiry, and became, subsequently, convinced of facts on the existence of which be had at one time doubted. My friend, Mr. Charles Hutton Gregory, lent me a copy of the Speculum Anal for the year 1828, in which he pointed out some passages relating to this matter, which 1 cannot avoid extracting here, premising a few observations on the instrument called the divining rod, virgule divine, baculus divinatorius, baguette divivatoire. This has been supposed to be a branch of a tree or shrub necessarily of a forked or letter Y shape, by the assistance of which certain gifted persons were enabled to discover wines, springs of water under ground, hidden treasure, and to practise other occult doings. This, with regard to shape, is just as vulgar an error as that which supposes that a stick of any kind of wood held in the hand serves as well as the hazel or the whitethorn for the production of the phenomena. In the counties of Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, the facts on this subject are well known, and the practice of dowsing, as it is called, has been cultivated time out of mind. In France the men of scientific pursuits have for the most part ridiculed the use of the baguette, notwithstanding abundant evidence in various parts of the country being extant of the success which had amended the practice of the sourciers. The Baron von Reichenbach has established facts regarding the emanations of light from graves, which are quite as remarkable as the proofs of emanations taking place from metals or from running water. Now that the Baron's researches, and the concurrent testimony of the cultivators of mesmeric science, have established that certain individuals are more susceptible of magnetic impressions than others, it will not be pronounced impossible that subterraneous running water may influence some persons, and not others. In different classes of animals the sensitive powers are known to vary greatly, as they do indeed among those of the same species. " But," it has been asked, " granting that emanations from subterraneous waters may powerfully affect certain persons, what connection is there between this impression and the motion or rotation of the hazel rod, which is held in the person's hand or laid over his fingers?" What! is it fact that the hazel rod moves or rotates in the hand of a person of a certain impressionability, when that person passes over any ground, underneath his footsteps on which there happens to be a metallic lode, or a subterraneous stream of water, which we call a spring? I have been informed by highly respectable persons who have, in the West of England, witnessed the facts, that under these circumstances a hazel or a whitethorn rod does rotate and does move, and occasionally dips with so energetic a force, that on one occasion the bark of a fresh hazel rod was stripped from the stick and left in the grasp of the operator's hand.
    The following extracts will further illustrate this subject:-
    " Although the effects or motion of the divining rod, when in the proximity of springs, has been and is to this day considered by most philosophers a mere illusion, yet I think the following brief observations relating to this subject, and which were communicated to Dr. Hutton by a lady of rank, with the account of her subsequent experiments performed before him, his family, and a number of friends (as given in the doctor's translation of Montucla's edition of Ozanam's Recreations), must convince the most incredulous that in the hands of some persons, in certain situations, the baguette is forcibly acted upon by some hitherto unknown invisible cause. Notwithstanding the incredulity expressed by Montucla relative to the indication of springs by the baguette or divining rod, them appears to exist such evidences of the reality of that motion as it seems next to impossible to be questioned. This evidence was brought about in the following manner. Soon after the publication of the former edition of the Recreations, the editor received by the post the following well-written pseudonymous letter on the subject of this problem. The letter in question is dated Feb. 10, 180.5, and as with the whole of the correspondence it would be too long for our limits, I shall select such parts only as are immediately essential to a right understanding of the subject.
    The lady observes, ' In the year 1772 (I was then nineteen) I passed six months at Aix in Provence. I there heard the popular story of one of the fountains in that city having been discovered some generations before by a boy who always expressed an aversion from passing one particular spot, crying out there was water. This was held by myself and the family I was with, in utter contempt.
    " 'In the course of the spring, the family went to pass a week at the Chateau d'Ansonis, situated a few miles to the north of the Durance, a tract of country very mountainous, and where water was ill supplied. We found the Marquis d'Ansonis busied in erecting what might be termed a miniature aqueduct, to convey a spring the distance of half a league, or nearly as much, to his chateau, which spring he asserted had been found out by a peasant, who made the discovery of water his occupation in that country, and maintained himself by it, and was known by the appellation of l Walnuts d la Baguette. This account was received with unbelief, almost amounting to derision. The Marquis, piqued at being discredited, sent for the man, and requested we would witness the experiment. A large party of French and English accordingly attended. The man was quite a peasant in manners and appearance: he produced some twigs cut from a hazel, of different sizes and strength, only they were forked branches, and hazel was preferred, as forking more equally than most other trees; but it is not requisite that the angle should be of any particular number of degrees. He held the ends of the twigs between each fore finger and thumb, with the vertex pointing downwards. Standing where there was no water, the baguette remained motionless; walking gradually to the spot where the spring was under ground, the twig was sensibly affected; and as he approached the spot, began to turn round; that is, the vertex raised itself, and turned towards his body, and continued to turn till the point was vertical; it then again descended outwards, and continued to turn, describing a circle as long as he remained standing over the spring, or till one or both the branches were broken by the twisting, the ends being firmly grasped by the fingers and thumbs, and the hands kept stationary, so that the rotatory motion must of course twist them. After seeing him do this repeatedly, the whole party tried the baguette in succession, but without effect. I chanced to be the last. No sooner did I bold the twig as directed, than it began to move as with him, which startled me so much that I dropt it, and felt considerably agitated. I was, however, induced to resume the experiment, and found the effect perfect. I was then told it was no very unusual thing, many having that faculty, which, from what has since come to my knowledge, I have reason to believe is true. On my return to England I forbore to let this faculty (or whatever you may term it) be known, fearing to become the topic of conversation or discussion. But two years afterwards, being on a visit to a nobleman's house, Kimbolton, Huntingdonshire, and his lady lamenting that she was disappointed of building a dairy-house in a spot she particularly wished, because there was no water to be found—a supply she looked on as essential—under promise of secresy I told her I would endeavour to find a spring. I accordingly procured some hazel twigs, and in the presence of herself and husband, walked over the ground proposed, till the twig turned with considerable force. A stake was immediately driven into the ground to mark the spot, which was not very distant from where they had before sunk. They then took me to another and distant building in the park, and desired me to try there: I found the baguette turn very strong, so that it soon twisted and broke: the gentleman persisted that there was no water there, unless at a great depth, the foundation being very deep, (a considerable stone cellar), and that no water appeared when they dug for it. I could only reply that I knew no more than from the baguette turning, and that I had too little experience of its powers or certainty to answer for the truth of its indication. He then acknowledged that when that building was erected they were obliged to drive piles for the whole foundation, as they met with nothing but a quicksand. This induced him to dig in the spot I first directed; they met with a very fluent spring; the dairy was built, and it is at this time supplied by it. I could give a long detail of other trials I have made, all of which have been convincing of the truth, but they would be tedious. For some years past I have been indifferent about its becoming known, and have consequently been frequently requested to show the experiment, which has often been done to persons of high estimation for understanding and knowledge, and I believe they have all been convinced. Three people I have met with, who have, on trying, found themselves possessed of the same faculty. I shall only add one more particular incident. Having once shown it to a party, we returned into the house to a room on the ground floor; I was again asked how I held the twig; taking one in my hand I found it turned immediately; on which an old lady, mother to the gentleman of the house, said that room was formed out of an old cloister, in which cloister was a well, simply boarded over when they made the room.
    L'H omme a la Baguette, from experience, could with tolerable accuracy tell the depth at which the springs were, and their volume from the force with which the baguette turns; I can only give a rough guess. In strong frost I think its powers not so great; on a bridge or in a boat it has no eject, the water must be underground to affect the baguette, and running through wooden pipes acts the same as a spring. I can neither make the baguette turn where there is no water, nor prevent it from turning where there is any, and I am perfectly ignorant of the cause why it tome. The only sensation I am conscious of is an emotion similar to that felt on being startled by sudden noise, or surprise of any kind.
    " I generally use a baguette about six inches from the vertex to the ends of the twigs where they are cut off.
    I shall most probably be in London next winter, and will (if you wish it) afford you an opportunity of making your own observations on this curious fact.'
    "The lady having arrived in London, wrote to Dr. Hutton to inform him that she proposed being at Woolwich on Friday the 30th inst. (May 1806) at eleven in the forenoon.
    Accordingly," says Dr. H., " at the time appointed, the lady with all her family arrived at my house at Woolwich Common, where after preparing the rods, &c., they walked out to the grounds, accompanied by the individuals of my own family and some friends, when Lady — showed the experiment several times in different places, holding the rods, &c. in the manner as described in her Ladyship's first letter above given. In the places where I had good reason to know that no water was to be found, the rod was always quiescent; but in other places, where I knew there was water below the surface, the rods turned slowly and regularly, in the manner above described, till the twigs twisted themselves of below her fingers, which were considerably indented by so forcibly holding the rods between them.
    " All the company present stood close round the lady, with all eyes intently fixed on her hands and the rods, to watch if any particular motion might be made by the fingers; but in vain; nothing of the kind was perceived, and all the company could observe no cause or reason why the rods should move in the manner as they were seen to do. After the experiments were ended, every one of the company tried the rods in the same manner as they saw the lady had done, but without the least motion from any of them. And in my family, among ourselves, we have since then, several times, tried if we could possibly cause the rod to turn by means of any trick, or twisting of the fingers, held in the manner the lady did; but in vain, we had no power to accomplish it.
    " The annexed figure represents the form and position of the rod, about six inches in length, cut off just below the joint or junction of the two twigs."


    There can be no impropriety in stating now that the lady in question was the Honourable Lady Milbanke, wife of Sir Ralph Milbanke, Bart. (afterwards Noel) and mother of the present Dowager Lady Byron, the wife and widow of the great poet. A very interesting analogous statement relating to the same person will be found in the Quarterly Review for March, 1820: No. xliv. Vol. 22.
    Lately in France, the Count de Tristan has published a work on the subject, which I have been unable to procure; but I have a most interesting volume containing two memoirs by M. Thouvenel, a physician of reputation in France, who was commissioned, in the year 1781, by the king, to analyse and report upon the mineral and medicinal waters of the kingdom. The author undertakes a patient and laborious investigation in the spirit of a philosopher, and regards bis inquiries as leading to a new thread in the tangled skein of physics, which, like any single fact of science, may lead to the discovery of a thousand others; a fact which may have escaped the vigilant sagacity of observers, or which may have been totally abandoned to the blind credulity of worthy soft-headed persons, or in short, since the reign of a kind of false philosophy the offspring of scientific pride, may have been delivered over to the presumptuous disdain of men of false wisdom. Thouvenel found a man named Bleton, whose business was that of a sourcier, or discoverer of springs by means of a divining rod; and upon this man he made more than six hundred observations, many of them in the presence of above 150 persons, mostly of important stations, and very credible from their high character, who testify to the truth of the observed phenomena. Among others was M. Jadelet, Professor of Physic at Nancy, a man eminent for his abilities, who was not only a witness of these experiments, but was actually concerned in the greatest part of them. As in the case of Lady Milbanke, with Bleton, an internal feeling was coincident with the movement of the rod. Whenever this man was in a place where there existed subterraneons waters, he was immediately sensible of a lively impression, referable to the diaphragm, which he called his "commotion." This was followed by a sense of oppression in the upper part of the chest; at the same time he felt a shock, with general tremor and chilliness, staggering of the legs, stiffness of the wrists with twitchinga, a concentrated pulse, which gradually diminished. All these symptoms were more or less strong according to the volume and depth of the water, and they were more sensibly felt when Bleton went in a direction against the subterranean current, than where he followed its course. Stagnant water underground did not affect him; nor did open sheets of water, ponds, lakes, or rivers affect him. The nervous system of this man must have been susceptible, since he was more sensibly affected by change of weather and variations in the state of the atmosphere than other persons: otherwise he appeared healthy. A severe acute disorder had absolutely at one time deprived him of the faculty of perceiving water, and his sensibility in this respect did not return until three months after his recovery; so that if he were sensitive, he could not be classed among the sick sensitive. But however remarkable these constitutional peculiarities may have been, there was in Bleton's case a more than usual distinctness in the behaviour of the divining rod. Unlike many sourciers, he did not grasp it closely; he did not warm it in his hands; he did not prefer a young hard branch forked, new'y plucked, and full of sap. His custom was to place horizontally on his forefinger and thumb a rod of any kind of wood (except elder), fresh or dry, not forked, only a little curved or bent. A very straight rod failed to turn on its axis, but a bent rod turned on its axis with more or less rapidity, according to the quantity of the water and the force of the current. Thouvenel counted from thirty-five to eighty revolutions in a minute, and always noted an exact proportion between the rotation of the rod and the convulsive motions of Bikon. If these memoirs be critically examined, it will be found that the author experimented with full care to avoid every source of fallacy. The natural motions of the rod on Blkon's fingers was backwards, but as soon as he withdrew from the spring over which he stood, in any direction whatever, the rod, which instantly ceased to turn, was subject to a new law, for at a determinate distance from the spring an action of rotation in a direction contrary to the former one took place. This was invariable, and upon measuring the distance of the spot, where this retrograde phenomenon took place, from the spring, its depth could generally be found.
    I pass over an account of numerous experiments made by this intelligent and careful observer, pointing out the analogies of the known phenomena of electricity and magnetism, by modifications resulting to the sensibility of Bleton, and the rotation of the rod by various ingenious electrical and magnetic trials suggested by the inventive sagacity of Thouvenel, in order to arrive at the curious anticipations of some of Professor Faraday's discoveries, by means of the sensibility of Blkon and the invariable laws which regulated the rotation of the divining rod, when the experiments were made over places where various substances had been concealed under the ground. It was found that whether the trials were made in this manner or over masses of coal, subterraneous currents of water, or metallic veins, the divining rod indicated a determined sphere of electric activity, and was in fact an electrometrical rod. " Of all the phenomena relating to the distinctions of fossil bodies," says Thouvenel, " acting by their electric emanations, doubtless the most surprising is this; upon the mines of iron, of whatever kind they may be, the rods supported by the fingers of Blkon turned constantly upon their axis, from behind forward, as upon the mines of coal; while upon other metallic mines, as upon other metals extracted from their mines, the rotary movement took place in the contrary direction, that is to say, from before backwards. This circular movement, which never varies while Blkon is in a perpendicular position over mines or upon metals, presents revolutions as rapid and as regular as the revolutions in the contrary direction upon the mines of iron and of coal."
    The constitutional effects of spasms and convulsive twitchings took place more or less in all the veins, but copper emanations excited very strong and disagreeable spasmodic symptoms, accompanied by pains about the heart, by flatulent movements in the bowels, and by abundant eructations of air. On lead, there seemed to be less unpleasant consequences, but stronger again on the mines of antimony. Having previously determined that for Bleton, on all the metals, except iron, there existed a sphere of electric activity, which propagated itself towards the west, a great number of experiments were made which always had the same results. At the depth of two, three, or four feet under ground were buried gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, and iron. The weight of each was only from five to eight pounds. In other similar pits pyrites of all kinds, sulphur, coal, resin, wax, and lard, were buried. All these different deposits were made at distances from each other, in gardens or in open country, and they were so well covered over and concealed that nothing could be perceived except private marks to be known only to certain assistants. Over the resin, wax, and lard, Bleton experienced nothing; over the coal there was a decided effect; the convulsive tremor of muscle was manifest, and the rod rotated from behind forwards. Over the iron. the same indications, but more energetic. A feeble impression from the sulphur, but sufficient to establish a difference between it and the two preceding, and the rod over the sulphur turned from before backward. Pyrites produced the same rotation as the sulphur, and a alight tendency of the electric sphere towards the west. Gold and copper especially exhibited strongly this singular tendency of the active electric emanations. Over silver, tin, and lead also, it was more remarkable. It extends itself more or less from the focus of the metals, according to their depth and their mass. For example, in describing a circle having a radius of threw or four feet from this focus, Bleton felt absolutely no action except on the line of the west. It was the same when, in proceeding from the vertical point of the focus, he successively traversed all the radii of the circle; or even if be went from all the points of the circumference to proceed to the centre. In these two inverse proceedings it was always only on the radii going westward that his person and the rods were affected by movements more or less intense, according to the kinds of metal.
    It must, however, be admitted that the action of these metals presenting only the differences of greater or less in degree, either in the nervous and muscular impressions of the body, or in the circular revolutions of the rods, constantly moved from before backward, these differences do not yield a certain means of distinguishing the five metals one from the other. The object Thouvenel had in view was nevertheless fulfilled, for he had established the extent and the determination of a sphere of electric activity towards the west, in certain metals and on sulphur, which does not exist in the same manner on iron, on coal, or on streams of water.
    To give a summary, then, of the relations of these phenomena to those established by Professor Faraday, it may be said that over iron mines the divining rod assumes a movement of rotation diametrically opposite to that which it exhibits over all other mines. When iron and other metals are extracted from their ores and deposited under ground, the phenomenon occurs with the same distinction; that is to say, with iron it rotates towards the north. With all the other metals submitted to trial, its action is from east to west. The influence of the red metals appears to be more energetic than that of the white. But with regard to this divining rod let one condition be remarked—the relation of the organic substance to another organic and living power of matter; to a human being in a certain susceptible state of nervous system. Thouvenel describes the symptoms which affected Bleton when he was in the sphere of metallic action, and the rod becomes the secondary part of the philosophical instrument, composed of an impressionable human being and a piece of stick. Some of the Baron von Reichenbaeles subjects would have been just the persons to illustrate the facts of Blkonism.
    A highly susceptible girl, the lady's maid of a very clever and intelligent friend of mine, residing in Hertfordshire, offers, when she is mesmerised, a great many deeply interesting phenomena. I have repeatedly mentioned her as Harriet P—. She is as guileless and as good a being as can be met with, and is much beloved by her excellent and amiable mistress, who has repeatedly addressed me on her case. If a piece of hazel stick or whitethorn be presented to Harriet, she grasps it and sleeps mesmerically in less than a minute. The sleep is at first very intense and deep, and then the stick is held so firmly that the spasmodic state of the muscles renders it very difficult for even a powerful bystander to turn it in her hand. Mary Anne Douglas and several others of my patients have exhibited the same phenomena. In two of the cases a very curious point has been remarked. If the hazel or whitethorn stick be held with the pointed end upwards, that end which is upwards when it grows from the ground, a force of attraction is so energetic that these individuals cannot resist their inclination to grasp it with both hands. One of them will rush towards it from a considerable distance, and will with extreme eagerness run from the bottom to the top of the house in order to have the pleasure of grasping it. If she succeed in getting hold of it before its direction is reversed, her delight is unbounded; she becomes intoxicated, and soon *sett into a state of deep unconscious sleep. If, however, the stick be turned rapidly with its pointed end dowawards, a repulsive force operates, and each patient feels a repugnance to it. If the stick be allowed to be held in both hands, and a piece of gold, or of platinum, or of cobalt, or of nickel, or the pointed end of a rock crystal be held to it, in each experiment there is a burning sensation complained of, and an endeavour is made to loosen the hold on the stick, with ludicrous haite. A gentleman who had been often put into mesmeric sleep, remarked, on holding successively several pieces of these sticks, that a sensation of heat was communicated to his hand in each instance, and he felt a strong tendency to sleep. Susan L., a highly susceptible person, exclaimed, while in a sleep-waking state, "that a shower of fine small sparks of fire" came from a piece of hazel which happened to be in my baud. She did not see this from ash or from fir, but invariably saw it from every piece of hazel or from whitethorn that was brought near her. On numerous occasions experiments were made to test the accuracy of her repetitions on observing these things, and she invariably gave the same answers to the questions on the same objects. Subsequently, eight other individuals were separately examined as to their susceptibilities to different kinds of wood. Each gave the same results and saw the sparks of fire. In many other cases, the impressionability being different, the hazel and whitethorn bad no perceptible effects; the patients handling the bits of stick without observing heat or sparks, and failing to grasp them spasmodically. But Harriet P—r's impressionability was put to a very useful purpose. Her mistress had heard of the practice of dowsing for water, and in a letter to a correspondent, now before me, writes thus under date of July ISO:—" We made a curious experiment here some days since with Harriet P—. We have very bad water here, and have long been unable to find a good spring. Mr. G. has in vain dug and dug and dug for one. I proposed the divining rod; for, said I, Dr. Asbburner would not think it a foolish experiment. Harriet P-- was willing, so we went forth to a field the most likely one for a spring; Mr. and Mrs. G., myself, and two friends staying here. We put Harriet to sleep by the hazel stick; she grasped it so tightly we were obliged to use the gold chain,--she then held it only in one hand, and immediately began to walk, taking her own way. She went very carefully for about twenty yards; then suddenly stopped as if she had been shot. Not a word was uttered by any one. We all looked on, and were not a little surprised to see the rod slowly turn round until her hand was almost twisted backwards. It looked is if it must pain her. Still no one spoke. Suddenly she exclaimed, There ! there ! don't you see the stick turn? the water is here—under my hand. I see, oh I see—let me look—don't speak to me—I like to look.' How deep is the water?' said Mrs. G., speaking to Harriet's fingers. 'Oh, about three feet; I can't quite tell, but it is here.' In a moment, to our astonishment, she sunk down on the grass, took the stick again in both her hands, and seemed to like it as if it could feel. We made a strange group round her, as we were all much astonished to see what we had come there to see, but still it astonished us: she seemed so like a little witch. We marked the place, and after a few minutes we awoke her. In the evening she was again mesmerized to sleep, and we asked her what she saw at the spring. Why I saw water—water everywhere.' Then,' said I, how do you know where the spring is?" Oh, because it goes trinkle, trinkle—I know it is there." Why did you sit down P' Why, because I was so giddy; it seemed as if all was water but the little piece of ground I stood upon; —oh I saw so much water, all fresh, but no sea; 1 tried to see the sea, but I could not—I could not at all.' Mr. G. caused a large hole to be dug at the place; and just at the depth of three feet the water was found. A brick well has been constructed, and there is a good supply of excellent water. No one could doubt of the action of the rod, it turned so evidently of itself in her hand. Of course when awake Harriet knew nothing of the circumstance." So many and so various are the testimonies and the facts relating to the divining rod, that it would be tedious to recite the hundreds of respectable documents offered by those authors who have written on this subject. Lately, a work by Tardy de Mon-travel, printed in 1781, entitled " Memoire Physique et Medicinale sur la Baguette Divinatoire," has fallen into my hands, and it abounds in testimonies as to the truth of the same class of facts. One of the most anima works I have seen on the subject is a little hook with the title of " La Physique occulte, ou Traite de la Baguette Divinatoire, et de son Utilite pour la decouverte des sources d'eaux, des minieres, des tresors cachez, des voleurs, et des meurtriers fugitifs, avec des principes qui expliquent les phenomenes les plus obscurs de la Nature," par M. L. L. de Vallemont, Ph. D. et Ph., &c. This work, embellished with plates illustrating the different kinds of divining rods, with the various modes of holding them for use, appeared at the latter part of the seventeenth century, and passed through several editions in France as well as in Holland. It is remarkable for much curious literary and historical learning, and for able statements of the arguments which were used in the controversies, rife at that period, on the realities of the facts under consideration. It contains a curious catalogue of a great number of mines discovered, in France, by means of the divining rod, made out by a German mineralogist employed for the purpose by the Cardinal de Richelieu. But the most singular part of the book is the powerfully authenticated history of Jacques Aymar, a peasant, who, constitutionally impressionable, guided by the divining rod, followed a murderer for more than forty-five leagues on land, and more than thirty leagues by sea:—
    On the 5th of July, 1692, a dealer in wine and his wife residing at Lyons were murdered in a cellar, for the sake of robbing them of a sum of money kept in a shop hard by, which was at the same time their chamber. All this was executed with such promptitude and secresy that no one had witnessed the crime, and the assassins escaped.
    A neighbour, struck with horror at the enormity of the crime, having remembered that he knew a man named Jacques Aymar, a wealthy peasant who could follow the track of thieves and murderers, induced him to come to Lyons, and introduced him to the king's attorney-general. This peasant assured the functionary that if they would lead him to the place where the murder was committed, in order that he might receive from it a certain influence, he would assuredly trace the steps of the guilty parties, and would point them out wherever they were. He adde:l, that for his purpose he should make use of a rod of wood such as he was in the habit of using to find springs of water, metals, and hidden treasure. The man was conducted to the cellar where the murders were committed. Them he was seized with emotion; his pulse rose as if he were suffering from a violent fever, and the forked rod whiclrhe held in his hands turned rapidly over the two places where the murdered bodies had lain.
    Having received the impression, Aymar, guided by his rod, passed through the streets through which the assassins had fled. He entered the court yard of the archbishop's palace. Arriving at the gate of the Roue, which was shut, it being night, he could then proceed no further. The next day he went out of the town by the bridge of the Wine, and always guided by the rod, he went to the right along the bank of the river. Three persons, who accompanied him, were witnesses that he sometimes recognised the tracks of three accomplices, and that sometimes he found only two. In this uncertainty he was led by the rod to the house of a gardener, where he was enlightened as to the number of the criminals. Fur on his arrival he maintained that they had touched a - table, and that of three bottles which were in the room they had touched one, over which the rod visibly rotated. In short, two boys of nine and ten years of age, who, fearing their father's anger, had at first denied the fact, at last acknowledged that three men, whom they described, had entered the house, and had drunk the wine which was contained in the bottles indicated by the peasant. As they were assured by the declaration of the children, they did not hesitate to go forward with Aymar, half a league lower than the bridge on the bank of the Rhone. All along the bank for this distance the footsteps of the criminals were traced. Then they must have entered a boat. Aymar followed in another on their track as clearly by water as by land; and his boat was made to go through an arch of the bridge of Vienna which is never used, upon which it was concluded that these wretches had no boatman, since they wan.. tiered out of their way.
    On the voyage, Aymar went ashore at all the places where the fugitives had landed, went straight to their coverts, and recognised, to the grea surprise of the hosts and spectators, the beds on which they had slept, the tables on which they had eaten, and the pots and glasses they had touched.
    He arrived at the camp of Sablon, where he was considerably agitated. He believed that in the crowd of soldiers be should find the murderers. Lest the soldiers should ill-treat him, he feared to operate with his rod. He returned to Lyons, whence they made him go back to the camp of Sablon by water, having furnished him with letters of recommendation. The criminals were no longer to be found there. He followed them to the fair of Beaucaire in Languedoc, and always remarked in his course the beds, the tables, the seats where they had been.
    At Beaucaire the rod conducted him to the gate of a prison, where he was positive one of the wretches would be found. Fourteen of the prisoners were paraded before him, and the rod turned on a man with a humped back, who had been sent to the prison about one hour before for a petty larceny. The peasant did not hesitate to declare his conviction that the hump-backed man was one of the assassins; but he continued to search for the others, and found that they had gone towards Nisines. No inure was done at that time. They transferred the hump-backed man to Lyons. On the journey he asseverated his innocence; but finding that all the hosts at whose inns he had lodged recognised him, he avowed that be bad been the servant of two men of Provence who had engaged him to join them in this foul deed: that these men had committed the murder and had taken the money, giving him but six crowns and a half from their booty of one hundred and thirty croons. He corroborated the accuracy of the indications of the peasant as to the gardener's house, the camp of the Sablon, the fair of Beaucaire, and the other places through which the three had passed, extending over forty-five French leagues. All these things of course excited immense interest. At Lyons many repetitions of the observations respecting the turning of the rod in the cellar were made in presence of many persons. Monsieur l'Abbe Bignon gives his testimony to the truth of the statement of facts, in a letter, inserted by Vallemont in his work. There can be no doubt that such statements require very strong corroboration, and here they apparently obtain it. Vallemont, quoting the authority of the Royal Society of London, in the second part of the history, seventeenth section, one hundred and twenty-fifth page, says, that in all countries where men are governed by laws, the testimony in a matter of life and death, of only two or three witnesses, is required; but is it, then, treating an affair of physics equitably, when the concurrence of sixty or a hundred persona is insufficient? It is difficult to define the just boundaries of credulity; but in all these recitals of histories of events, there is this general consent, that in those who can make use of the rod, there is always an agitation, a fever, or some sensation which indicates a nervous commotion; and the best evidence of the closest investigation goes to the point that most frequently the rod is of bezel wood. How far these stories tend to the conclusion that organic tests appear to require the reagencies of organic force is at present a matter of speculation; but it is to be hoped that the effort to attract serious attention to this class of facts is not uninteresting or unimportant.
    There are many facts connected with the Baron's new force which may be used to illustrate the influence of water and of shining surfaces in producing the clonic spasms of hydrophobia. The phenomena offered by certain somnambules are highly illustrative of the effects of water in certain diseased or susceptible states of the human system. Running water, a constantly changing series of crystalline molecules, perpetually discharges positive or negative odic force.