Year: 1879

small pox or typhoid fever.

 The early stage of the trance can be readily counterfeited so that the best expert cannot detect it. Clairvoyants have every reason in the world to stimulate the trance, because there is in all civilized lands an almost univer- sal but very erroneous belief that the trance develops powers of prophecy and second sight. On the other hand they have every reason to keep out of the genuine trance, because when we seek to deceive and swindle our fellow mortals we need full control of our faculties, and this entranced persons do not have.

 Another count in this indictment against public clairvoyants is that many of them are procuresses and seek in every way the ruin of the young girls who consult them. Their power over their victims even when they do not directly accomplish their destruction is very great, leaking oftentimes to-waste of money, or health or life.

 Clairvoyants are responsible for not a few deaths in the families of those who believe in them. Their method is as follows: A clair voyant hazards the prediction that death will take place in the family of one of her patrons In less than a year. During the next year, some one or two in that family are taken ill, it may be seriously; the prediction IS called to mind and the consequent fright may be the cause of the patients death.

 To rescue one who has ever become fully convinced of the genuinness of clairvOyants, and addicted to the habit of consulting them, is sometimes as difficult as to save drunkard or an opium eater The victims of clairvoy- ance, as of other and allied untruths, become moral inebriates; they are drunk with their delusions' and, although, like the victims of intemperance, they may be ashamed of their folly and, when removed from temptation, may resolve, in full sincerity to reform, yet, under the pressure of affliction. or in the pres ence of pretender to these mysterious powers their resolutions are forgotten; they relapse like the drunkard who finds that single glass of wine is stronger than legions of pledges, or the love and pleadings of wife, and parent, and child. -.

 The friend to whom 1 have several times referred, and who is an expert in the study of delusions, and has had an especially large experience in detecting and exposing clair voyants, tells me that he has found great difficulty in saving their victims, especially young persons, who have once fallen into their power.

 Sometimes, as myself know, the treatment of established physicians of character and education has been completely overthrown,- and with disastrous results,-by some ones superstitious confidence in the prescriptions of clairvOyants. .'

 To offer money rewards for the display of clairvoyant power-as the French Academy has done-is unscientific and puerile, and save, perhaps, as means of impressing and convincing the people, who cannot understand physiological law-should not be encouraged. Money has it's limitations as we'll as its power; the laws of nature are not Tn the market the sun cannot be hired to rise Tn the west, nor to give place to the earth as the center of our sYs-

 em; the principle of the conservation of force is not open to bribery; aud all the wealth of the world is as helpless as an infant to make seventeen out of two and two, or to endow any human creature with clairvoyant, or sec ond-sight, or mind-reading power.

 Sometimes the question is asked whether some of the public clairvoyants may not be honest, self deceived, but not intentional swim dlers. Honest clairvoyance pursued as bus mess is contradiction of words. Success in the practice of clairvoyance as a trade requires knowledge, natural or acquired, of the con- ditions of success, one of which is intentional deception of the victim. In private life there are occasionally found those who, through ex- haustion of disease or from natural suscepti- bility of constitution, readily llinto the we'll understood state of trance, and in that state they honestly imagine that they are blessed with the gifts of healing and prophecy, and in this delusion they are encouraged by the fond of friends the credulity or rnon-expertness of their medical attendants, and by occasional condolences. Clairvoyants of this class are sometimes honest at first, although they may develop into professional tricksters but if they remain honest, they soon find out that their gifts are too uncertain to be of any pract- ical value, and soon, as the expression goes, they Close their powers"

 A striking case of this kind occurred few years since in Brooklyn. A young lady of good character afflicted with severe chronic disease professed to be favored with second sight. Friends and physicians, amid great excitement urged her on; clergymen and newspapers became interested and professed to investigate; half city went wild about 8 poor suffering invalid who had no powers ex- cept those common to the race, and who, above all things, needed to be let alone.*

 Another question often raised is whether these public clairvoyants can be legally pun ished. received about year ago letter from one of the editors of this city, asking me to aid him in framing law to be presented to the legislature that would cover these cases. My reply was in substance that any law, how ever skillfully framed could be enforced only with great difficulty, especially in this country. In despotism impostors fare much harder than in America. As long as average human testimony is accepted in our courts on ques- tions of this nature,' so long will it be impos- sible to convict clairvoyants or mediums for human testimony without limit can be brought in favor of the widest of their claims. Even witchcraft, in the days of it's glory, could not have arrayed more intelligent, and honorable and sincere body of believers and advocates, than the clairvoyance of to-day.

 In departments of science that have been lOnu established fha fpcfimnnU nf fyx,n experts, if they accord, outweighs that of scores of non-experts as isseen not unfrequent- ly in eases of poisoning; but the successful study Of delusiOns is something very recent it is, 80 to speak, just entering the domaln of science; the number of experts in the subject is very limited, and those few are known as such only in a very narrow circle consequent ly, their opinions are'not sought for in litigat- ed cases put in their place, mediums and clairvoyants and their victims are invited to give their opinions under oath on one of the most difficult and important branches of science the physiology and pathology of the nervous system.+ Years hence, when the knowledge of this subject. now confined tolimited body of specialists, shall be somewhat diffused through society, and the fact of the existence of such shall be recognized, then, and pro- bably not before, will it be possible to enforce any law designed to protect our people from clairvoyants. In this as in other matters, law fellows public opinion more than it leads it. At the present time clairvoyants are very dear to the American heart; nearly every house is for them a castle; if seriously threatened, would rally to their support. The remedy for delusions is not in law, but in higher civilization. If

 'siuce the above was written, this person Mollie Fancher has become famous all the world an d. if any amount of excellent human testimony of the non expert sort could create science; all of the claims that have been made in regard to her must be accepted So far the unfortunate Oatient is con- cerned, responsibility be attached to what she claims, what is claimed for her the question it relates to her does not in any way touch morality, but is purely of science; the phenomena of hys teria and trance which she manifests symptoms that are now fsmiar aud we'll understood, aud of great interest the claims of cairvOyance, second sght and prophecy that have been made for her by various personsthough not by the physician who has most of her, and for years has studied her syp toms-are of the same value as similar claims that made by and for thousands and thousands in thls other countries In hystsria, hystero-epiepsy and hysterical trance, deusons and deceptions part of the symptomsas truly starvaen exataion of the senses, anaetnesia paralysis and those sufferers who manifest these delusons deceptions are fre- quently more blameworthy for them, than for the various and obvious physical symptoms of their dis hpnn