The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 6&

But the development of mediumistic technique has not kept pace with our growing knowledge of its methods. The

experiments of Crookes, both with Florence Cook and D. D. Home, who “ levitated ”’ out of one window and back through

Fig. 330.

another, have been submitted to a searching criticism, and it is now seen that they have no claim to be in any way scientific. Crookes himself abandoned the attempt to convince his scientific brethren and returned to his chemical work.

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THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

Flashlight photograph of a materialized head, formed of teleplasm that has exuded from the medium known as “‘ Eva C.”

(Courtesy of Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, from his ‘* Phenomena of Materialisation.” Kegan Paul, Trench, Tribner & Co., Ltd.)

CHAPTER 9g

Eusapia Palladino, the well-known Neapolitan medium who died in 1918, mystified two continents for fifty years. She was repeatedly caught in the act of fraud, but never ceased making new converts, one of her most important captures being Cesare Lombroso, the renowned criminologist. He was convinced that his deceased mother had appeared to him with the help of Eusapia’s mediumship. Reading the detailed

the many séances she gave to committees of scientific men, one is struck by the marvellous dexterity with which she played her mother-wit and knowMevdisie ork human nature against the ponderous science of her judges, now refusing, now conceding, controlling her controllers, wearing out their DIA Eve Mice, choosing the best means of deceiving them and carrying out her manceuvres with supreme skill and agility, while always ready to cover a critical situation by a display of temper. Perhaps the most detailed account of a materializing medium is the story of “* Eva C.,” the French medium studied by Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing and Madame Bisson.

accounts of