The power of the mind over the body : an experimental inquiry into the nature and cause of the phenomena attributed by Baron Reichenbach and others to a "new imponderable" / by James Braid.

Date:: 1846

Credit: The power of the mind over the body : an experimental inquiry into the nature and cause of the phenomena attributed by Baron Reichenbach and others to a "new imponderable" / by James Braid. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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$Tlierc was no resemblance to an ordinary fire; the colour of tlie light was pure wliite, sometimes mixed with iridescent colours. The next patient was far more sensitive to the magnet than the foiTner. She declared that, at the moment the armature was withdrawn, she had seen fire rise from the magnet, the height of a small hand, white, but mixed with red and blue. Mdlle. Maix.— As often as the armature was removed from a large magnet, in the dark, she instantly saw the luminous appearance above the poles, about a hand-breadth in height. But when affected with spasms, she was more sensitive, and the phenomcaion increased in her eyes amazingly. She not only now saw the magnetic light at the poles much larger than be- fore, but she also perceived currents of light proceeding from the whole external surface of the magnet, weaker than at the poles, but leaving in her eyes a dazzling impression, which did not for a long time disappear. Mdllc, Barbara Keichel saAv the magnetic light not only in the dark, but also in such a twilight as permitted the author to distinguish objects, and to arrange and alter the experiments. The more intense the darkness, the brighter and larger she saw the flaming emanations ; the more shai'p and defined their out- line, and the more distiiict the play of colours. In the dark she saw the magnet giving out light, when shut, as well as when open, with this difference, that in the former case there were no points where the light appeared concentrated; but all the edges, joinings, and corners of the magnet gave out short fiame-likc lights, uniform in size, and in a constant undulatory motion. From the large magnet these were about as long as the tliick- ncss of a little finger; when the armature was removed, however, the light Avas concentrated at the two poles, from A\'luch the flames arose to abo»it the height of eight inches and a half, rather broader than the bai', At each depression, where two plates of the magnet were laid together, there appeared smaller flames ending in point-like spai'ks on the edges and corner. These small flames appeared blue, tho chief light was white below, yellow higher up, then red and green at top. It was not mo-$