FOURTH TREATISE

FURTHER SOURCES OF THE FORCE WHICH RESIDES IN CRYSTALS, THE MAGNET, AND THE HUMAN HANDS

The rays of the sun and of the moon, heat, friction, light,—as sources of the new force.

95. WHAT I have already brought forward here has by no means exhausted the sources from which the enigmatical force now under examination flows; in fact, I have not yet mentioned the principal of them. Following up the subject, I met with new and important facts. Physicists have, as is well known, for many years debated the question whether or no the sun's rays are capable of magnetizing a steel needle. Since Morichini, who published the first observations, Mrs. Somerville, Baumgarten, Configliaghi, and others, have taken the principal share in the discussion of this subject. Recollection of the treatises on this point led me to reflect on the part the sun might possibly play in the subjects of my present researches, and which acquired some probability from the undeniable and well-known influence exercised by the moon in certain nervous diseases.

97. I availed myself of the first cloudless sky to experiment in this direction on Miss Maix. I placed the end of a copper wire eleven yards long in her hand, and as usual allowed her a little time to become accustomed to it. I then put the other longer end out of the window into the sun-shine. The effects of the crystallic force became immediately perceptible, in a weak degree, but distinctly. I next connected with the wire a plate of copper, sixteen square inches in extent, in the shade, allowed the patient to get used to the end of the wire, and put the plate in front of the window in the sun's rays. Scarcely was this done when an unexpected cry of pleasure greeted me from the sick-bed. Immediately the rays fell upon the plate, a strong manifestation of the crystallic force made itself felt in the hand, by the known peculiar sensation of warmth, which then ascended through the arm to the head. But this well-known and not unexpected result was accompanied by a simultaneous sensation of cooling, and this so strong and predominant, and with an experience of strengthening refreshment through all the limbs, that the patient declared herself greatly revived and cheered by it. Heat and cold were felt together.

98. In a modified experiment, with the view to attain the results less complicated with the effect of heat, I substituted a white cloth for the copper-plate. I first attended to the accustoming in the shade, and then carried the stiff wire with the linen cloth attached to it into the sunshine. The chamber was warm, the outer air was cool. Nevertheless, effects presented themselves to the sensations of the patient as quickly, though more weakly, as from the copper plate; a dull feeling of increasing crystallic force in the wire, then the striking cooling and reviving sensation: the latter, however, tolerably vivid.

99. I varied this experiment by placing a wet cloth, instead of a dry one, upon the copper wire, which was held in the hand of the patient till she was used to it, and then placed in the sun. The effect was accompanied by a disagreeable accessory sensation, like damp air would have produced upon her; but the principal sensation, which is peculiar to the sun—increasing heat in the wire, and the refreshing cold which presented itself and spread over her whole body—was manifested in the most vivid manner.

100. I now sought for confirmation and warranty of these observations. Some days later I undertook the same experiments with Miss Nowotny. She had now so far recovered that she had quite left her bed for some weeks; but I nevertheless wished to test the influence upon her. One end of a wire was placed in her hand, the other in the sunshine before a window. She immediately felt alterations in that part which she held in her hand: it became cooler to her. I brought it back into the shade,—the coolness disappeared; I again placed it in the sunshine,—the coolness returned. I now attached about a square foot of tinned iron plate to the wire, and placed it in the sun. The cooling not only quickly manifested itself, but increased for two or three minutes to such a degree that I received the assurance that the wire had become icy cold and begun to make the hand stiff. The plate was brought back into the shade, and the experiment repeated; but the sensation of cold immediately began to decrease, and in a few minutes disappeared; while, when the plate was brought back into the sun, it returned forthwith, and increased till it had attained the same intensity. I have already remarked upon the point that the peculiar sensation which the crystallic force produces in the hands of the sensitive sometimes expresses itself like heat, sometimes like cold; the particular differences of both will be specially elucidated hereafter. Here, where the cold depends on the sun, which otherwise is the source of warmth to all nature, it is pre-eminently characteristic of a specific activity. This was expressed so powerfully and clearly that the distinction was found to be remarkable, according as I let the sun's rays fall obliquely on the metal plates, when the effect was weaker, or as they struck vertically upon them, in which case it was much more strongly perceived;—whether I made the experiment, in this way, morning or evening, or at noon; whether I performed them in July, or repeated them under the same conditions in November.

101. I had no opportunity to institute very circumstantial experiments on this point, on Miss Atzmannsdorfer; but I heard from her, in conversation, that in general the sun exercised a very agreeable yet not warming but pleasantly cooling influence over her whole body.

102. In like manner formerly, before I had become acquainted with this peculiarity of the sun's rays, I had often heard from Miss Sturmann the then enigmatical statement that the sun made her cold.

103. But I was enabled to investigate this subject most minutely by means of Miss Reichel. The sun's rays not only produced the peculiar sensation of cold when a wire was connected with iron, copper, or zinc plate, tin-foil, lead-foil, strips of silver, gold leaf, German silver, brass plate, &c., but also when linen, woollen cloth, cotton or silk stuff connected with it, were brought into the direct light of the sun. Nay, every other substance, porcelain, glass, stone, wood, water, lamp-oil, alcohol, sulphur; in short, everything I chose to select, when connected with the wire which the girl took into her hand, in the shade, and moved into the sun's rays, produced in her that striking sensation of increasing cold, to which the sensitive all unanimously and uniformly testified, as much surprised at the apparent contradiction which lay therein, as I was myself: which, however, the sequel will very clearly solve.

104. If it were actually the force of crystals, of the magnet, of the human hand, as I have identified them in the preceding treatises, which I now again met with in the sun's rays, this could only be proved by the same methods I had pursued in similar cases with the crystals, &c., by comparison of the effects. It was necessary, therefore, to raise and discuss the questions: Are the sun's rays capable of producing the same conditions in matter as the poles of crystals, the magnet, and the human hand are? Will mere sunshine impart to a piece of iron the force which is conveyed into it by the magnet? Has it the capacity to imbue all substances with the power of reacting upon sensitive sick persons? Can it produce a magnetised glass of water? Can the sun's rays, so often investigated, possess a new and mighty force, which has hitherto wholly escaped the glance of physical science? I scarcely ventured to admit such thoughts, but my desire for an explanation acquired strength daily.

105. The first thing curiosity led me to try was a glass of water. I let it stand five minutes in the sun, and then directed the waiting-woman, who possessed very little magnetic force, to give it to Miss Maix, without informing her for what purpose it was: without having been asked, she said that it was magnetised water directly she had put it to her lips. It produced the peculiar pepper-like burning, well known to the sensitive, on her tongue, palate, throat, down the oesophagus to the stomach, at every point arousing spasmodic symptoms. I allowed another glass of water to stand twenty minutes in the sun's rays before it was given to the patient; this time also by the weak hands of a girl, to avoid the stronger effect of mine. This was found as strongly magnetised as ever one could be by the large nine-layered magnet.

106. It was possible that a more considerable portion of the force might adhere to the glass than was contained in the water. To test this, and at the same time to obtain information of the internal condition of the water, whether or not it might be somewhat in the same relation as a tube full of steel-filings stands to the magnet, I had the solarized water poured into another glass, which was then given to the patient. The result was similar to what had often been experienced with magnetized water by Miss Sturmann and Miss Nowotny—that the transferred water was just as magnetic (as it is called) in the second glass as in the first, and that consequently the complete revolution of all its molecules had little or not at all modified the internal condition which constitutes what is called its magnetization. Even an hour after, when the remainder was drank, the so-called magnetism had not wholly disappeared, and though weaker than at first, it was still perceptibly charged. In this, as in all other characters, the solarized water agreed most perfectly with that which had been impregnated by the magnet, crystals, or the human hand.

For security, I subsequently followed out these experiments with Miss Sturmann and Miss Reichel. I shall take the liberty to omit an account of the a"cessory circumstances, which would only cause tiresome repetitions.

107. To follow out the parallel, I took the often-mentioned German silver conductor, and first placed it in the patient's hands to accustom her to it, then allowed the sun's rays to fall upon it for a few seconds, and immediately gave it back to Miss Maix. She found it rendered active just as when it had been placed in contact with a magnet, crystals, or the human hand; but at the same time she at once perceived the pleasant sunny feeling with which the conductor also had been charged, and which it retained. According to repeated experiments, this persisted to her senses for five or six minutes, after which it became imperceptible; while, on the other hand, the crystallic force, with which the sun had imbued it, was felt much longer, and in fact for the same period of twenty minutes that the same conductor had retained the force of my two hands, § 82. The rays of the sun, therefore, exactly equalled here the force of my ten fingers, and acted just as permanently by accumulation as the latter.

108. I allowed Miss Reichel to become used to the feeling of my hand, and then went out into the sunshine. After ten minutes had elapsed, during which I had exposed myself on all sides to the sun's rays, I went back and gave her the same hand. She was much astonished at the rapid alteration in the great increase of force which she experienced in it, the cause of which was unknown to her. The sunshine had evidently impregnated me in exactly the same way as the magnet had charged (§ 741 the body of a man, and in other experiments my own person. Miss Maix had already previously informed me that she could not bear any one coming out of strong sunshine to approach her bed. Some time before, a party of friends had entered her room after a walk in powerful sunshine; this had produced so much pain and uneasiness, that she could not sustain it, and had been obliged to beg her friends to leave her; and this had been merely the action of the sun, not the cooling, but that warming the hand-wire, § 97.

109. After I had given up the experiments with the sun's rays on Miss Maix, the girls of her neighbourhood amused themselves with them. When I revisited her, they told me that the patient had found an iron key which they had laid in the sunshine, after a short interval, magnetic, and as strongly as a magnetic rod which they possessed. It did not attract iron, but Miss Maix declared that it acted upon her exactly like a magnet. The key had therefore acquired a magnet-like charge from the sun. It had not endured, but disappeared from the key after some time, as the crystallic force does from bodies.

110. This observation led the girls at once to further experiments, with astonishing results. They took a horseshoe magnet which had become weak, and instead of rubbing it to strengthen it, laid it in the sunshine, and they had the pleasure to see their expectation fully confirmed. The horseshoe became so much strengthened and newly magnetically active upon the patient, that thereafter, whenever a magnet became weak, it was only necessary to lay it in the sun to make it good again. This is a kind of confirmation of Zantedeschi's observations.

111. I now sought to complete these experiments, by a trial, with Miss Reichel, of the behaviour of crystals in the sunshine. The fact appeared that a rock crystal and a selenite had scarcely been exposed to the rays of the sun five minutes before the girl felt the peculiar nervous excitement from it greatly strengthened.

112. All these facts at once combine to afford the law: The force of the sun, corresponding to the crystallic force, &c., is capable of being accumulated in oilier bodies. And since they acquire this, charge and retain it for some time, they possess a certain degree if coercive power over it.

113. Its conductibility through other bodies has already been demonstrated by the conduction to the patient's hands by copper and iron wires; I will only subjoin a few more facts. When I placed the end of a linen cloth in Miss Reichel's hand, gave her the usual interval to get used to it, and exposed the other end to the sun's rays, while the hand remained in the shade, the sensation of the crystallic force soon advanced gradually from the linen to the hand, and produced cold in it. The same occurred when I gave her a woollen cloth, a piece of cotton or silk stuff, and let her handle it in the same way. When I drew the cloth back out of the sunshine, it lost its coolness in a few minutes, and recovered it again as often as I brought it back into the sun's rays. The conduction was most rapid through silk, next through linen, slower through wool, and slowest of all through cotton. A wooden rod, twenty inches long, conducted the solar force pretty rapidly; a measuring rod, six feet eight inches long, required more than half a minute for the effect to penetrate from one end to the other. But .a glass tube conveyed the sensation to the other end, directly one end was placed in the rays of the sun. Therefore, substances of every kind, whether good, imperfect, or lion-conductors of electricity, manifest, without exception, the power of conducting that force if the sun's rays; those which are continuous, easily and rapidly; others, which are composed of distinct parts, like woollen and cotton stuffs, with more difficulty, and more slowly.

114. I pass over the confirmatory experiments, and, in order not to dwell longer on these comparisons, hasten to the luminous phenomena. It was here an especial concern, and a very necessary trial, to examine whether the force of the sun was in the same way capable of endowing the objects with the power of emitting luminous flame in the dark. The lawsof phosphorescence are known, and, according to these, it was impossible to bring one of the bodies upon which the sun had shined, at once into darkness: we know from Heinrich that in such a case a great proportion of solid bodies are luminous. The contrivance which I arranged for carrying on experiments, in perfect darkness, while the sun was shining, was as follows. In my laboratory, a covered staircase leads down to a lower story, where my collections and instruments are kept: I had the windows of this closed up: when I closed both doors, I had perfect darkness upon the staircase. Communication was easy with this, and everything could be understood that was spoken both in it and in the adjacent rooms on the two floors. Miss Reichel expressed her willingness to allow herself to be shut up here; and I mention these accidental circumstances especially, because a great number of experiments on light were performed on this staircase: these will all be mentioned in their place, and bear reference to the locality just described. At the same time, this arrangement gave the best control to ensure the accuracy of the sensitive observer, who, shut up here far above or below the room where the operations were carried on, could never know what modifications the experiments underwent there; she could only be aware of their effects, and simply state how and where she perceived them. Up stairs, in the room, I had prepared several large sheets, half a square yard in extent, of copper, iron, and zinc, plates covered with gold leaf, large pieces of lead foil, linen dipped in melted sulphur, &c. I connected these, one after another, with an iron wire, about one-twelfth of an inch thick, thirteen yards long, carried this through the keyhole of the door, which was stopped closely all around it, and down the stairs, where the observer grasped it in her hand, keeping the end of the wire turned upwards. After she had remained quiet in the dark long enough for her eyes to become accustomed to it, I placed the objects above named, one after another, in the rays of the sun. Before quite a minute had elapsed, a slender column of flame, from ten to twelve inches high, and only two-thirds of an inch thick, ascended before her eyes from the end of the wire. It was gradually attenuated upwards, almost like a knitting needle at the end, and spread an agreeable coolness all around. When the air was disturbed by speaking, it flickered backwards and forwards with it, as I have described of the flame of the magnetic needle. As the metal plates above were moved into the sunshine or into the shade, the flame in the darkness below rose and fell upon the wire, an interval of half a minute or more always elapsing before the manifestation of the change. I substituted a human being for the metal plates, and placed the end of the wire in her left hand. It was my daughter. By her own force, while still standing in the shade, she produced a little flame on the wire, which diffused warmth around, in accordance with facts already detailed. When she placed herself in the sunshine, the flame on the end of the wire shortly rose to a height of nearly nine inches, and now diffused a pleasant solar cooling. As often as she removed out of the sunshine, the flame sank to its previous inconsiderable size, and again emitted heat. I next brought some metal plates and other objects, by way of experiment, as rapidly as possible out of the sun's rays into the darkness, before linethe eyes of the observer. Without wishing to take account of the luminous flame which spread over them, since this, though not produced, might be more or less influenced by phosphorescence, it is still to the purpose to mention here that from the sharp angles of the plates, especially those turned upward, issued tufts of flame in the manner of the magnet and crystals; green and blue from copper, clear white from gold and silver, dull white from tin, dirty blue from lead, reddish white from zinc, white from a quicksilvered mirror, and blue with white points from a mass of crystals of sulphate of potass. Lastly, I brought a glass tube forty inches long and two inches wide out of the sunshine into the darkness; it was enveloped on the upper half, as held vertically, by fine white lambent flame, which passed at the upper end into a tube about three inches long, playing around the top.

I applied alternately polarized light, which fell at an angle of about 35° into the room through the window, and the direct rays of the sun, for which purpose was used a roomy balcony, to which there was ready access from the workroom; however, no distinction in the results could be perceivtd. All these experiments prove that the force flowing on to matter, with the sun's rays, produces the same beautiful luminous phenomena as the crystaiic and other forces do.

115. Therefore, in every respect related here, the action of the sun agrees with those of crystals, the magnet, and the human hand; and this, our fixed star, must be received as the fourth source of crystalic force.

These observations, as is evident at the first glance, lead far in their more distant ramifications. I avoid, however, in the outset, entering into the infinite multiplicity of their relations in universal nature, because I wish in the first place to trace out and establish successively all the sources I have become acquainted with of the force now under consideration, and then afterwards to elucidate each singly, so far as I have been able hitherto to detect its peculiarity. Nevertheless, I cannot help casting a few glances at one of these many sides, because it is this very one which more directly establishes the mode of action of the sun. This is the spectrum. Since the sun's rays manifest the force in question, the question at once presents itself—whether this force resides in all the rays of the coloured spectrum, only in one, or more or less in particular of them? I made a preliminary experiment in this direction on Miss Maix. I threw the spectrum upon a wall with a glass prism, placed a copper wire in the patient's hand, allowed her to become accustomed to it, and then, holding it near the other end in my hand, moved it slowly from colour to colour across the spectrum. She could not see me, for we were separated by a folding screen. Many and repeated experiments, both with her, and afterwards with several other sensitive persons, led to the uniform results; violet-blue and blue were the principal seat of the solar agreeable influence, and of that reviving coolness which diffused itself throughout the body of the patient; consequently, that part of the spectrum in which exists the least intensity of light. On the other hand, the crystallic force, apparent warmth—nay, sensation of heating of the wire, although it was some six yards long, increased continually from the middle, from yellow to orange, so that it was most distinct and deep in the red. Here we find the maximum of the heating rays; the true warmth of which, however, was far from being able to reach the patient. These observations support the statements of Morichini and Mrs. Somerville, and place new weight in the scale of the probability of their assertions, which are as yet by no means universally received.

117. Each end of the spectrum, therefore, had its specific strongly expressed influence upon the excitability of the sensitive persons; the more minute and detailed examination of which will afford interesting further conclusions, and the elucidation of which will form the subject of one of the succeeding treatises.

118. From this point it was but a step to the moon, the trial of which necessarily pressed the more urgently upon me, from the well-known fact that countless terrestrial phenomena among the healthy and diseased show themselves to depend more or less upon our satellite, the causes of which we as yet know not. I made the first experiment on Miss Maix. It was not carried out without some difficulty. Her window looked toward the north, and the moon could not be got at on any side. In this difficulty I resolved to carry an iron wire one-twelfth of an inch thick through two rooms, then over an area, and from these, again, through three rooms, in all about 100 feet; thus alone could I obtain some of the moon's rays. I placed one end of the wire in the patient's hand, the other was connected with a large copper plate, which, with the usual precautions, was moved into the moonlight. After a short pause the sensation in the hand began to alter very much. Iron wire and copper plate had alone produced a warm sensation, as they always did. The effect of the moon, which became associated with this, was described by the patient as of a very violent and mixed kind, so that her accounts of it did not evince her usual clearness. Without delaying with the particulars of the present merely preliminary experiment, the fact will suffice here, that active influence of the moon, conducted to the patient through a long wire, did really present itself. The sensation on her right hand was much more pleasant than on the left. But a point which did not occur in the sunshine, and manifested itself as peculiar to the moon, was a distinct kind of attraction toward the wire through the whole arm, so that she felt induced to follow along the wire with her hand. She ran her finger slowly along the wire, when she felt the attraction, and would have been inclined, if not in bed, to trace it out along its whole length. We meet here with something similar to that strange attraction which we have observed in the magnet for cataleptic persons, and from which little doubt remains that it is the irresistible attraction which so powerfully seizes somnambulists, and which, therefore, being conductible, may be conveyed by metals.

The patient regarded it as really magnetic, only she said that this attraction was much stronger than that of the magnet. Yet I must repeat what I have already mentioned, that Miss Maix's hand never was perceptibly solicited by the magnet to motion or adhesion. The special local difficulties which prevailed here of continuing nocturnal observations of this kind, rendered it impossible to investigate these interesting phenomena more minutely; I therefore was compelled to turn to other sensitive persons to collect confirmations.

119. This I did in the first place with Miss Reichel, who afforded me abundance of help in variously-modified experiments. Whatever object I placed in her hand, and, after she had become accustomed to it, desired her to hold in the moonlight, she always immediately assured me of the access of exactly the same sensation as was caused in her when I placed the points of the crystals, poles of magnets, or my fingers upon it, or when the sun had shone upon it. All substances made use of exhibited this susceptibility and conducting power. Her sensation, however, was not cooling, but of gentle warmth; and the sequel will show that this girl, of all those with whom I experimented, distinguished most definitely and most uniformly, with objective reasons, between cool and warm, between which the sensations of the sensitive constantly fluctuated. When I put the German silver conductor into her hand, laid it down, and then moved it into the moonlight, immediately covered it with a shade, and, after some pause, let her grasp it again, she found it filled with the force with which the moon endowed it, i. e. warm; passive and active capacity for accumulation were thus proved. When I allowed copper plates, lead and tin foil, zinc plate, silver and gilded surfaces, to remain some time in the moon's rays, and then conveyed them to her on the darkened staircase, she found their pointed angles flaming with tufts of white, red, green, and blue light.

When I arranged a metallic plate, half a square yard in extent, so that I could at pleasure bring it into the moonshine and the shade, connected a long wire with it, and carried this through the keyhole down the darkened stairs into the hands of Miss Reichel, who remained there, she saw in every instance, as often as I let the moon's rays fall upon it, a slender flame arise, scarcely as thick as one's finger, perfectly straight, to a height of ten inches, and disappear after a short space as often as I removed the plate from the moonlight. She always felt this flame warm: I repeated the experiments through three different full moons, and always with the same results.

120. From the foregoing, it follows that the moonlight is not mere moonshine; that, even though it brings no warmth to us, its brings together with its light another powerful, hidden force, which exhibits exactly the same characters as that which resides in crystals, Sce. Therefore the moon is the fifth source of this force.

Since the heating rays of the spectrum had so strikingly strengthened the peculiar effect of the force now under investigation, I made it my care to follow out this phenomenon. Formerly I had observed that force in a kind of equilibrium, so in crystals, on the magnet and in the human body. Now, however, in the sun and moon, I no longer found it at rest, but in motion; it appeared to flow from the heavenly bodies, in the same way as—putting the undulatory things out of sight—we may imagine rays of light and heat to flow. I could not but be led by this to an examination of analogous facts in nature,—in the first place to heat. To this end I laid a large copper plate upon a broad piece of earthenware, arranged the usual connection by a long copper wire with Miss Maix's hand, put a cold brass tailor's goose upon it, with the heater in, and placed my right hand upon it. I allowed her to become accustomed to it in this condition. Then the iron heater was taken out, a similar one, heated so as to glow weakly, substituted for it, and the case again closed. I now held it a little distance above the copper plate, without letting it touch. At first, therefore, it only acted by radiant heat upon the metal plate. An increase of the known warm sensation, which is caused by the crystals, &c., at once came to the observer's hand from the wire. When I then placed the heated iron firmly upon the copper plate, and slid it slowly over the surface to diffuse the heat over a greater space, the sensation increased rapidly and strongly in proportion as the heat spread. The patient complained at the same time of a striking sense of weight in the hand. With the removal of the hot instrument, therefore with the cooling, the sensation decreased and increased again alternately as I renewed the heating or cooling.

122. In another experiment of the same kind I placed one end of a strong iron wire in the patient's hand, and grasped it not far from the other end with mine, letting her get accustomed to this. Then I brought the flame of a candle to the extremity, and heated it gradually till the blue shades were produced. The heating by conduction did not reach my hand, and there was a length of forty inches between this and the patient's at the other end; therefore communication of common heat was out of the question. The sense of the force appeared immediately, grew with the increase of the heat, and soon attained such a degree that it penetrated through the patient's arm up to her head. It slowly disappeared on the removal of the flame, and was reproduced every time the flame was again applied in the same manner to the wire. I repeated the experiment with copper wire, in this way: I rolled it up closely ten times, and placed two burning wax candles under the coil of wire. The results were quantitatively greater, but qualitatively exactly similar to the preceding; and this in every repetition. I had a wooden vessel filled with cold
water, the wire sunk in it, and then accustomed the observer to this. The cold water was poured out, and boiling water poured in. She immediately felt the impression of warm crystallic force flowing into her hand.

123. I now gave the experiments the reverse direction. I placed a piece of ice in the hot water, from which the wire led to the patient's hand. The form of the phenomena was immediately changed. The sensation of heat and the other symptoms rapidly decreased, a long drawing occurred through the arm and hand, the disagreeable warm sensation gave place to the entrance of that cooling which the sun's rays produced, and which diffused itself gradually over the breast, back, and whole person. Ice placed in the patient's hand at once produced cramps, and allowed no minute observations.

124. I went through controlling experiments with Miss Reichel. I heated with the flame of a candle one end of an iron wire above six feet long, to the other end of which her hand had.been accustomed. Common heat could not reach her at this distance, least of all from such a weak flame and in the space of but a few minutes. Nevertheless, the wire immediately appeared to become warm, and then so hot, that she wondered that I, who was so near the flame, could hold it in my hand; but with my healthy senses I did not feel the slightest rise of temperature; she at the same time felt cool wind flow from the end of the wire—the well-known characteristic of excited crystallic force, &c. I repeated the same with an iron wire of equal thickness, but more than sixteen yards long; I obtained the same effects, but observably more slowly.

125. The question of luminous appearances was now examined. I placed Miss Reichel on the dark little staircase, conveyed a thick copper wire to her, and heated the further end of it with an argand lamp. A reddish-green flame four inches high rose from the end of the wire with the greatest heating, and fell and rose as I moved the lamp from and back to the wire. I performed a similar experiment with thick iron wire five feet long, one end of which was heated to redness in the lamp. At the other end a flame six inches long arose in the dark, and slowly sank with the cooling. A longer iron wire, over sixteen yards, with one end heated to redness and the other carried into the darkened staircase, gave a flame of a finger's length. Luminous phenomena produced by heat are here placed beyond doubt.

126. With these evidences I was for the time content. They proved, by the feeling and sight of different observers, effects of both radiant and conducted heat, which agree in all respects with those that demonstrate the existence of the peculiar force of crystals, arc. Heat, therefore, is the sixth source of the same.

127. Friction is of complex character in its effect; heat, electricity, galvanism, &c., take part in producing it. At the same time I thought it right to investigate its participation in the circumstances now under consideration. At the residence of Miss Maix I placed a copper-plate upon the deal floor, connected it with her hand by a copper long wire, and rubbed it gently with a piece of wood. A sensation of increasing warmth was immediately developed in the wire, and rose to apparent heat when I rubbed on the wood with greater pressure and rapidity. This sensation increased and diminished as I rubbed more or less. When I substituted my woollen coat for the wood, the same effect was obtained, but strengthened. With a silk handkerchief it was stronger still.

128. I connected Miss Reichel, by means of a brass wire, with a copper-plate which lay upon a wax-polished oaken floor. I placed a piece of wood on the copper, and rubbed it. She at once felt the effect of the excited force through the wire which she held in her hand. Tin-plate acted in the same way under like circumstances, but more weakly than copper. The end of the wire emitted flame visible in the dark in both. I sawed a piece of wood in the dark with a thin-bladed hand-saw. The observer teheld nothing unusual in the sawdust which flew about, but the blade of the saw, to the extent in which it was in action, soon emitted a reddish light, as if glowing with heat, and a little flame sprouted from every tooth of it. Copper and zinc plates rubbed together with the hands only exhibited sparks here and there. Zinc upon zinc and copper upon copper in like manner emitted little visible light. Gypsum rubbed upon gypsum emitted no light at all. Pieces of charcoal rubbed together appeared as if glowing red, from their points of contact down into their substance to the extent of a finger's breadth. Pieces of sugar rubbed together afforded the usual commonly visible luminosity, but the sensitive saw in addition to this a flaming light one inch and a half in extent surrounding the former. I saw two glass flasks rubbed against each other become fiery at the points of contact; but she saw these parts surrounded by flames as large as one's fist. Unglazed, therefore rough porcelain capsules, gave bright emissions of light visible to me, but only immediately on the flat parts strongly rubbing upon each other; the patient saw flames the size of an expanded hand on them. At this period she was so well that she daily, without hesitation, went about her employment through the crowded streets of Vienna.

129. I rubbed two glass tubes, forty inches long, across one another. I saw a long luminous streak on the line of friction in the dark. Miss Reichel saw besides this, around those parts of the tubes where they had been rubbed, delicate flame-like lights of a finger's breadth, which were so expanded laterally that they had the appearance of a fiery band. As long as the rubbing was continued, she felt the end of the glass tubes, more than twenty inches distant from the rubbed parts, become apparently very hot, which effect vanished immediately I ceased rubbing. She saw little flames as large as a finger issue from the borders, from which flowed out to some distance a gently warm wind. A similar result was obtained by rubbing two iron rods together: light on the line of friction, which however I did not, though she did see; sensation of apparent warming during the rubbing, and immediate rapid cooling when I ceased to rub; flaming emissions from the ends of the rods, and warm wind flowing therefrom.

130. In none of these experiments were the rubbed objects isolated, but lay sometimes on the floor, sometimes in my hands or in those of an assistant; there was therefore free passage for the escape of any electricity that might have been excited. It was impossible, again, that the heat produced by the friction of the objects could disappear so rapidly, as the appearances of flame vanished every time the rubbing was arrested; the contact electricity excited, produced in almost all the cases enumerated by the rubbing together of bodies of wholly identical substance, must have been so slight that it may be passed over; and in the very case when zinc and copper were rubbed together, and it therefore must have been excited, scarcely a trace of luminosity was manifested, so that galvanism can have had just as little influential share in this action as frictional electricity: from similar reasons I hold that the influence of thermo-electricity could not have been strong enough here, to allow of the observed phenomena of such magnitude being attributed to it, but I am of opinion that in addition to the partial influence which these agents may have had, to the friction itself is to be assigned the greater part of the peculiar luminous appearances which the sensitive persons here perceived. And so I believe, though perhaps with less certainty, that friction must be regarded as the seventh source of the force dwelling in crystals, &c.

131. In the researches on the sun's rays and moonlight, we have already seen that light assumes an important position when we enter upon the question of the origin of the peculiar force with which we are now dealing. Whether this inheres by and for itself in light, or is only associated with it, or whether it depends on other radiations occurring simultaneously with light, are questions certainly of essential moment, but which, however, I do not regard as in place here, where the business is in the first place to determine the sources generally, the analysis of the inner nature of these sources necessarily remaining as the object of future inquiry. I will therefore merely investigate whether light in general is to be counted among them. The examination of an ificial light still remained to be done. When in broad daylight I brought a lighted wax candle near Miss Maix, she felt that it produced a peculiar coldness in her. Several such candles increased this cold, which then attacked her whole body. I removed the candles from her, going a step at a time, to a distance of the length of two rooms, amounting altogether to nearly eight yards. The cold produced by them was diminished very much at this distance, but did not entirely disappear. She remarked that this cold perceptibly resembled that which was diffused from the wire carried to her from the sunshine. This, to her unexpected observation, reminded her that she had never been able to remain at certain ceremonies customary at times among catholics, consisting of strong illuminations at night with hundreds of burning candles; for instance, illuminations of the representation of the holy sepulchre, 81c.; the burning lights had always so thoroughly chilled her, that she had been compelled to leave. But Miss Maix had suffered in a slighter degree from her at present greatly heightened complaint, during her whole life, and is to be regarded as one born sensitive, who at every age has been subject to the sensations dependent on it, even when she appeared healthy and went about. The peculiar influence of light upon her, from distances at which even radiant heat could be but extremely weak, and producing a sensation on the nerves diametrically opposed to that of heat, had therefore been always clearly manifested, even at a time when no one imagined that there was anything abnormal in it.

132.Counter-experiments on Miss Reichel led to the same results. She felt a burning candle to give out cold at a considerable distance; two candles acted at almost twice as far; an argand lamp still farther off; at the greatest distance when a ground glass globe was placed over the flame.

I tested by the often-adopted methods, whether the causes of these direct sensations were transferable to third bodies, conductible through them, &c. In front of a copper plate, which was connected with Miss Maix by a wire conductor, I placed two burning wax candles in such a manner that she could not see them, and consequently could not receive rays from them. She experienced simultaneously-increased warmth in the wire, and the pleasant cooling sensation which the sun's rays gave her, only much weaker here than from the sun. This was repeated at different times with the same results. The same was performed with Miss Reichel. I placed eight burning stearine candles near a large copper plate; the observer was in the next room, her hand connected with the copper plate by a copper wire conductor. She perceived the effect very strongly, in the known way, and felt the coolness flowing from the end of the wire at a considerable distance. In a second experiment, in order to moderate the action of the heat I interposed a glass plate between the candles and the copper plate; the effect was very little diminished.

134. These results, according to which rays of fire-light on the one hand directly affect the sensitive, and, on the other, imbue other bodies with the peculiar force acting on them, producing thereby apparent alterations of temperature, moreover showed themselves to be conductible, and afforded flame-like appearances in the dark, led me to the conviction that not only the sun with the moon, but light generally, is a source of the force detected in crystals, &c., and is the eighth of these sources.


RETROSPECT

  1. The sun's rays carry with them a power to affect sensitive patients, which agrees perfectly with the force residing in crystals, the magnet, and the human hands.
  2. The greatest influence in reference to a force corresponding to that of crystals is manifested in the outer borders of the red and violet-blue rays of the solar spectrum.
  3. The light of the moon possesses the force now under consideration in a strong degree.
  4. Heat is a source of it.
  5. It occurs with friction, and
  6. It appears as a result of the light of flame.