The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-25
MRS. LE0N0RA PIPER.
SHE DISBELIEYES IN SPIR- ITS.
As tho Origin of the Trance Messages She Has Been Giving Forth to schol- ar'y Investigators for Years.

The recent declaration of Mrs Leon
 ora E. Piper, the trance medium, of he
 disbelief in the spirit authorship of tn
 messages she has given to the Worlt
 through the society for psychical re
 search, has renewed a controversy tha
 mad its origin years ago, when she frs
 attracted the attention of scientists
 There is one thing, however, on whicl
 they all seem to be agreed, and that is
 that she is honest in all that she does
 she having successfully submitted her
 self to every condition they imposed tt
 discover trlckery or deceit. Volume: have been published about her in tht
 proceedings of the society of which she
 IS called to be member and for which
 she is under contract to sit exclusively ! for fee, it is said, of twenty dollars a
 sitting. The investigation of her case
 which has been carried on continuous. ly and persitently since Professor Will
 liam James of Harvard university fourteen years ago, began seriously tc study the influences that possessed her
 has been thorough and judicial, and there has been no attempt to prejudice the public, or to advocate any pet the
 ory In fact, there have been attempts
 made to dscredit her by members of the society who did not find the tests they made satisfactory.
 It has been found and so reported,
 for instance, that the intellectual at
 tainments of "Phinuit" Mrs. Piper s
 control, were notoriously limited to
 her knowledge. Although he professes
 to be a French physician, who died
 about 1S60 he has shown lamentable
 ignorance of his ntive tongue. Con-
 cerning his inability to speak French,
 "Phinuits" original explanation to Dr.
 Richard Hodgson, secretary for Ameri-
 ca of the society, was that he had lived
 in Metz the latter part of his life, and
 there were many English, there, so
 that he was compelled to speak Eng
 fish, and had forgotten his French. Dr. Hodgson replied that this explana
 ton was very surprising, and a much more plausible one would be that he was obliged to use the brain of the me- dium, and would therefore manifest no more familiarity with French than she possessed. This suggestion appeared to "Phinuit" also more plausible, since few days later he offered 1t himself to another sitter as an explanation of his inability to sustain a converse tion in French No attempt has apparently been made to have "Phinuit' explain where he acquired his extensive vocab- ulary of distinctly American oaths, and slang of the New England variety, which he uses freely and with great fa- Of course this Is quite alien from the manners of Mrs. Piper. He has been questioned about his life on this earth but not one of his state ments admits of verification. Notwith- standing his claims to high rank as a "Phinuit's s" medical knowl- edge does not extend beyond what Mrs Piper may have read in Domestic He always gives the com mon or vulgar names of the medicines he describes and never their botanical ones. Similar limitations have been shown in his reference to history, lte- rature and science.
 ''Imperator," Mrs. Piper's latest, and present control, has also shown ignorance of some of the most things. He tells the sci antific men who are seekers after bo- ogical knowledge, that the interior" he spirit comes in ''in the bird and he monkey" not Tn the horse or the log; for the brain of each is of low .r quality and has practically no mind. All birds and monkeys, he | 'ays have interiors; but no other lnimal has except man. He is equally | haky when he discusses chemistry and | T., xre,io rLn, In +l,, ethereal or spiritual body is composed | # air, light and a large amount of hy- lrogen." And again. The body of the medium becomes filled with luminous ther until it is so distended that it annot contain any more" Then there 8 an "ether body" which lis subtle nd exquisite matter known to us as acium, not on the same plane as hy- rogen." To relieve the confusion into which the minds of the scientists who yere seeking light were thrown, I'm orator" explains that 'vacium'' is known as love" Rector another ontrol, but on an equally high plane of Intelligence, is authority for the state lent that "the spiritual ether is not omposed of oxygen and hydrogen, t is composed of the finer tissues armed luminous ether.' Mentor lird control, plunges recklessly into istorical and literary matters, and ounders around in this style when | rofessing to be Ulysses, speaking to chilles: He was the murderer who CIV Hector His intentions were not viii: it was an insane impulse" After aving relieved Achilles of criminal in- mt, Ulysses gave way to the spirit of gorge Eliot, who described meeting 1 le had with Lord Bacon, who said ,acularly: You have questioned my ,ality. Question it no more. l am That will probably oc- ,unt for there having been no commit cation received from the man who on lrth posed as Shakespeare. Dr. Hodgson gives many experiences has had with Mrs. Piper to show lat there is no continuity of memory ,tween Mrs. Piper and her controls z )n one occasion,' he says, mot long l ,fore a sitting, Mrs. Piper was star ed by very near sudden clap of | 2 under, and 'Phir uit,' on being after ard questioned, appeared to have no lowledge of the circumstance, and ap- lrently tried to guess at what had oc- lrred. Similarly on questioning Phi [ lit at one of my early sittings con I rning the life of Mrs. Piper, he pro- ssed ignorance on the subject, but i'd that he would find out things 2