The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1891-02-05
A DUPLEX PERSONALITY
STRANGE CASE OF MRS. PIPER AND
"DR. PHINUIT," OF MARSEILLES.

Boston, Jan. 27.-The meeting of the
American branch of the Society OF Psych-
ical Research was made especially inter
esting to-day to Bostonians and New Eng
landers, as Mr.. Richard Hodgson, the sec
Rotary. of No. Boylston Place, read
review Of the strange case Of Mrs. Piper
and "Dr. Phinuit. +" "Dr. Phinuit" being the
duplex trance personality of Mrs. Piper.
When in this second trance state Mrs.
Piper, or "Dr. Phi mutt" is able to diagnose
diseases with a certain amount of medical
accuracy whose treatment has been quite
successful, and has also been able to relate
incidents of family history of sisters, some
times going into the minute details, such as
giving the childhood accidents, and Incl
dents that befel the uncle of one of her
sitters and In giving charact eristics Of rel
atives, their methods OF life. etc.
"Dr. Phinuit" also had the power TO a
slight degree OF telling substantially what
near friends OF the sitter were doing at some
distant place. But along with these powers
goes a great deal of rubbish, and Mrs
Piper IN her trance state uses a vast amount
of spiritualistic jargon. While she is her
second self CDR. Phinuit'' also claims to be
under the influence OF supernatural forces.
SCIENTIFICALLY INVESTIGATED.
This double personality with its remarKa-
BILE accompaniment has long interested
! Observation-Disclosures of psychical phenom-
en-. From the first sudden aud unwelcome
| inception of the trance the WON IN has been
under the careful observation and scrutiny
OF such well-known American men of SCI
ence as Prot. James of Harvard, Richard
Hodgson of the American Brancl of the
Psychical Research Society, and many
| others. All the evidence is to the
effect that Mrs. Pipers frances are
really genuine exhibitions of super
| normal states that are possible in the
human economy, and that she Is thoroughly
honest in herself, while wholly oblivious to
what goes on in her second personality as
"Dr Phinuit." The information given, all
| the scientists who have observed and talked
with "Dr. Phinuit" agree, is not obtained
by any system of previous posting, fraud,
or collision of any kind, but is simply
learnt by the mediums second personality,
"Dr. Phinuit," through the supersensitive
| and supernormal powers with which, dur
ing the trance, Mrs. Piper is gifted.
While much Of the phenomena is strange
and some incidents Of the various seances
inexplicable, the Spirits by which the
various spiritualistic and fraud-marked
sludges gain their living need not be invoked
10 explain matters.
FROM WOMAN TO MAN.
Mrs. Piper's case Is unique, as for the time
being while she Is in trance she becomes an
other person, changes her sex, looses her
womanly qualities, becomes q rather coarse,
| good-natured, hoarse-voiced "Dr. Phinuit,n
who has boarding school girls French
accent and pretends to be the spirit of
deceased Marseilles physician. but unfor-
| 49,, uN1lw~ l. ~.
''spirits," "Dr. Phinuit' cannot speak
French. ''Dr Phinuit," or 'Phinuit," as
he she, Mrs. Piper in her trance state, it
must be remembered, is referred to as mas
culine) called himself for short, appeared,
as the sit ers describe him, as a coarse,
| crafty person, who swears considerably,
uses New England slang, is wholly differ
emit in manner from the normal moments of
Mrs. Piper, and impresses all who see Mrs.
Piper in trance very wildly as being
another personality, q duplex mind.
Phinuit's description Of himself is as fol~
lows: II have been thirty to thirty five
years in spirit, think. / died when | was
| 70, of leprosy, very disagreeable l had
been to Australia and Switzerland. My
wife's name was Mary Latimer. l had
sister Josephine. John was my fathers
name. I studied medicine at Metz, where I
| took my degree at 80 years old married at
80. Get some one to look all this up and
take pains about it. Look up the town of
-, and also the Hotel Dieu, of Paris. l
was born in Marssilles and am a southern
French gentleman. Find woman named
Carey, Irish, mother Irish, father French. l
had compassion on her in the hospital Ny
name is John Phinuit Schlevelle, but was
| always called DIR. Phinuit"
sEANCEs IN ENGLAND.
Mrs Piper went to England in November,
1889, and stayed there several months,
being examined by Prof. Oliver Lodge, F.
R. s., of Liverpool; by Prof. Sidgwiok of
Cambridge and other well-known investi-
gators. Prof. Lodge speaks Of her second
personality as follows, referring to his first
sitting with her:
MRS Piper was soon ready and we began
a sitting. She sat still. leaning forward in
her chair and holding my hands. After
some time she cried, %! am going The
clock struck the half hour just then, she
twitched convulsively, CALCULATED Doctor
and went into state of apparent epilepsy.
Gradually she became quiet, and, still hold
ing my right hand, cleared her throat in a
male voice, and with distinctly altered and
hardened features, eyes closed and unused
the whole time, the trance began. l quite
forgot it was a woman who was speaking,
as the whole manner and conversation was
so masculine"
Prof. Lodge again speaks of Mrs. Piper
as follows: THE personality speaking in
the trance is so distinct from the person.
atty of Mrs. Piper that it is convenient to
call it by another name. 1t does not differ
from her, as Hyde did from Jekyll, by
being personification Of the vicious por-
ton of the same individual, but it strikes
one as different personality. would
not, in,.using DIR. Phinuit's' name, be under
stood as thereby committing myself to any
hypothesis at the same time the name ex>
presses compactly the fact that the sitter
feels he is not talking to Mrs. Piper. You
are speaking no longer to a lady but to a
man, an old man. medical man."
1T IS THOUGHT TRANSPARENCY.
In explaining the phenomena Of "Dr.
Phinuit," Prof. Lodge says; 81 regard the
fact of genuine thought transference be-
tween persons in immediate proximity (not
necessarily ia contact as having been estab-
hshed by direct and simple experiment, and
except by reason Of paucity of instance. /
consider it as firmly grounded as any Of the
less familiar facts of nature, such as one
deals with in the laboratory. The 'Phinuit'
facts are most Of this nature example Of
the thought TRANSPARENCY, and do not hes
itate to assert confidently that thought
trRnsference is the most COM
monplace explanation of the phenomena go
Mrs. Piper's power to tell facts concerninf
your life, etc, to which 1t is possible to ap-
peal If DIR. Phinuit' tells one how many
children, or brothers, or sisters one has and
their names, as well as other family facts;