Supernatural (15 page)

All this excited the young Buchanan, who was convinced that the world was on the brink of some tremendous medical discoveries.
He recognised, of course, that the secret of the ‘nerve aura’ lies in the brain, not in the nervous system, for the brain is its central control box.
But in the 1830s, almost nothing was known about the anatomy of the brain.
What
was
known was that different parts of the brain seem to govern our instincts—protectiveness, tenderness, aggression, selfishness, and so on.
The great physiologist Joseph Gall discovered the basic structures of the brain in the late 18th century, and his pupil J.
K.
Spurzheim went on to try to locate various areas of the brain that were connected with human emotions—destructiveness, love, acquisitiveness, cheerfulness, egotism, and more than twenty others.
Spurzheim was convinced that when any of these areas becomes highly developed it causes a bump on the skull, which can be felt with the fingertips.
The science of these ‘bumps’ was called phrenology, and it soon became the happy hunting-ground of all kinds of quacks and charlatans.

When Buchanan went to study medicine at the University of Louisville in 1835, he was disappointed to discover that no one seemed to have heard of Gall or Spurzheim.
However, he did not allow this to dampen his enthusiasm, and flung himself into the study of the brain, devising experiments to test their theories.
Nowadays a man who held his beliefs would be shunned by his colleagues as a crank; but in that less sophisticated—and less narrow-minded—era, he was simply regarded as a brilliant young experimenter.
He was excited to discover that when a patient was hypnotized, he would respond with the appropriate emotion if various ‘bumps’ were gently touched—anger, love, joy, grief and so on.
This notion became known as ‘phreno-mesmerism’ and Buchanan claimed to be its discoverer—with some opposition from other followers of Mesmer and Spurzheim.
He was only 24 years old when he located what he believed to be the ‘region of sensibility’ in the brain.
And it was in this region that he later decided that the power of psychometry resided.

Three years later, Buchanan had a fateful meeting that was to determine the course of his whole life.
It was with a newly consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church named Leonidas Polk, who had abandoned the army in favour of the church, and whose diocese included practically the whole of the American south.
(He later became a Civil War general, and was killed at Marietta in 1864.) The bishop happened to mention casually that he could instantly detect brass when he touched it—even in the dark—because it produced an offensive metallic taste in his mouth.
Polk allowed Buchanan to feel his ‘bumps,’ and Buchanan was delighted to discover that his region of sensibility—governing the physical senses—was abnormally developed.
(It is important to note that phrenology—usually dismissed as a pseudo-science—could be astonishingly accurate, and that modern science has verified some of its claims.)

The bishop was so transparently honest that it never occurred to Buchanan to doubt his word—but neither, apparently, did he ask Polk to submit to scientific tests.
Instead, he decided to test others and see whether they might also have the same highly developed sensibilities.
Any one of his students whose head showed an unusual bump of sensibility was roped in, and Buchanan was gratified to discover that this faculty of ‘sensing’ brass through the fingers was relatively common.
In fact, his subjects could distinguish various metals, and substances like sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar.

There was nothing very odd about this, as far as Buchanan was concerned.
After all, the tongue has precisely this power—so why not the finger-ends, which are equally important for sensing objects?
Besides, as we have seen in the last chapter, scientists of the nineteenth century were aware of a power that modern science has forgotten—that of ‘seeing’ with other parts of the body beside the eyes.
This sounds absurd, yet precise descriptions of scientific experiments leave no doubt that it happened, and that it could still happen.
Dr Justinus Kerner, whose book
The Seeress of Prevorst
was a 19th century best-seller, described how the ‘seeress,’ Friederike Hauffe, could read with her stomach; he made her lie down with closed eyes, placed documents on her bare midriff, and listened to her reading fluently from them.
Later in the century, Professor Cesare Lombroso, the founder of scientific criminology, carefully tested a girl who was able to see through the tip of her nose and her left ear, and who could smell through her chin and—later—through her heel.
¹
Modern paranormal research has identified people who can ‘see’ colours through their fingertips, but modern science still regards the case as nonproven.
In Buchanan’s day it was regarded as a perfectly normal possibility.

Buchanan also observed that people in warm climates could ‘sense’ metals and other substances better than those in cold ones.
That was also logical, for in warm climates, we sweat more, and sweat-dampened skin is more sensitive—for example, to wind—than a dry skin.
This, says Buchanan, is ‘a fact which I now consider as well settled and familiar as any other in medical science’.
And when he imparted this fact to his students, he took care to disarm scepticism by an immediate demonstration.
Various chemicals were carefully wrapped in paper, and given to the students to hold.
Some of the substances were strong stimulants or narcotics, some emetics, some even cathartics.
Out of a class of 86, half the students experienced definite effects from the substances they held—some holding the emetic had to put it down hastily to avoid being sick.
(He does not mention what happened to those holding laxatives.) Buchanan got the 43 who experienced these effects to sign a testimonial, which he includes in his book.

His next thought was that if a mere substance could affect a ‘sensitive’ so strongly, then living people would produce an even stronger effect.
He selected his best sensitives, and asked them to try placing the hand on the head or body of another person, then to concentrate on the effect.
Again, his sensitives showed by their reaction that they were somehow picking up the feelings of the other person.
When the hand was placed on the stomach of a person suffering from a disease of that region, a ‘morbid impression’ was produced.
Buchanan claims that he himself became so good at sensing the diseases of patients in this way that he would feel ill after a few minutes and have to break the contact.

One of Buchanan’s best sensitives was a man named Charles Inman.
He could experience the mental states of patients by lightly running his fingers over their ‘bumps’.
But could it have been telepathy?
Or even mere auto-suggestion?
Buchanan decided to try a simple experiment.
He selected from his correspondence files four letters written by people with strong characters, and asked Inman if he could discover anything about the character of the writers by merely holding their letters.
The result, he says, surpassed all his expectations; Inman began to talk about the letter-writers with as much insight as if he had known them personally.

Two of the letters were from a surgeon named J.
B.
Flint and a doctor, Charles Caldwell, who had founded the college at Louisville.
These men had once been friends, but had become bitter enemies.
Inman immediately sensed their mutual detestation, and their negative emotions affected him so powerfully that he had to put the letters down.
Buchanan asked him which of the two he thought would win in a conflict; Inman held up Caldwell’s letter and said: ‘This one would crush the other.’
It was, in fact, true—Caldwell’s efforts had resulted in Flint being removed from his chair of surgery.

One of the other letters was from an eminent politician, and Inman was able to say that he was a man of considerable mental and physical power.
What could happen, asked Buchanan, if Dr Caldwell and the politician met in a head-on collision?
Inman shook his head.
That would be highly unlikely, he said, because both were too courteous and dignified.
Buchanan insisted—suppose the unthinkable happened and they
did
clash?
Reluctantly, Inman gave his opinion.
The two men would never reach the stage of open hostility, but if some disagreement
did
break out, the politician would probably handle the situation by some tactful rebuke that would immediately check the doctor.
Since Buchanan had seen that precise event take place, he was deeply impressed.

But what did it all mean?
For a ‘sensitive’ to identify a metal or a chemical—or even someone’s illness—was one thing; but surely to pick up someone’s character from a letter was quite another?
Buchanan did not think so.
Photography was a fairly recent invention—the photographs of the period were known as daguerreotypes, after the inventor Daguerre.
A daguerreotype, Buchanan reasoned, is nothing more or less than a ‘light painting’, a painting made on sensitive chemicals by the light reflected from its subject.
Well, human beings seem to emanate ‘nerve aura’, and this seems to vary according to their strength of character.
So why should a sensitive not be able to pick up the nerve aura from letters?

If this reasoning strikes us as specious, it is mainly because Buchanan has missed out a step in the argument.
A bloodhound can tell the difference between two human beings by the scent on their clothes.
Buchanan regarded sensitives like Charles Inman as human bloodhounds who can pick up the ‘scent’ of the nerve aura.
And if his precise character-readings sound improbable, we have to reflect that such processes as sound-recording and television transmission seem equally unlikely.
A gramophone record is a series of bumps on a disc of plastic or wax; when a needle travels over these bumps, it reproduces the sounds that originally made the bumps.
But any bright child will immediately raise the question: how can a few bumps record
all
the instruments of the orchestra?
Surely at least there ought to be a separate row of bumps for each instrument?
Sound recording is a preposterous miracle which, in any well-ordered universe, ought not to be allowed to happen.
And any scientist in 1842—the year Buchanan performed these experiments with Inman—would have stated with certainty that it
could
not happen.
Buchanan’s nerve aura daguerreotypes are no more or less absurd than a long-playing record or compact disc.

We may, of course, feel that Buchanan was deceiving himself with his own enthusiasm and excitement.
But reading his careful and precise accounts of his experiments, it is hard not to feel that any reasonable person would have found them just as exciting and just as convincing.
He describes, for example, how he called upon a clergyman in Boston, the Rev.
Kent, whom he describes as having an active mind but a feeble constitution.
(Many later experimenters discovered that sick people made the best ‘sensitives’.) Kent thought the whole idea preposterous, but agreed to co-operate.
Buchanan tried handing him a letter that had been written to him ‘by a gentleman of strong character and ardent emotions, immediately after the death of his wife’.
The Rev.
Kent described his sensations in an account of the experiment.
After placing his right hand on the folded letter: ‘I felt nothing in my frame at the moment, but very soon an increasing, unusual heat in the palm of my hand; this was followed by a prickling sensation, commencing in my fingers’ ends and passing gradually over the top of my hand, and up the outside of my arm.
I felt for nearly a minute no change in my mental condition, and stated this.
Dr Buchanan had given no hint of the nature or author of any letter he had with him—and I had no bias or subject on my mind from the day’s experience to influence me.
A rush of sadness, solemnity and distress suddenly came over me; my thoughts were confused and yet rapid—and I mentioned, there is trouble and sorrow here .
.
.’

Buchanan next handed Mr Kent a letter by General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, written to Buchanan’s father-in-law during an election campaign ‘in a spirited style’: ‘My first sensations were sharper and stronger than before, passing up in the same manner from my finger’s ends.
In less than a minute my whole arm became violently agitated, and I yielded to an irresistible impulse to give utterance to my thoughts and feelings.
A determined, self-confident, daring and triumphant feeling, suggested the language I used, and it seemed to me that I could have gone on triumphantly to the accomplishment of any purpose, however subtle or strong might be the opposition to be overcome.
My whole frame was shaken, my strength wrought up to the highest tension, my face and arm burned, and .
.
.
when I retouched the letter, after repeated removals of my hand by Dr B., in consequence of my great excitement, it was like touching fire, which ran to my very toes.’

We can see why Buchanan, watching the clergyman’s mood change from scepticism to intense excitement, should have been totally convinced.
Further experiments—he carried out literally hundreds in those first two years—deepened his certainty that he had made one of the major scientific discoveries of the age.
In his ‘Original Sketch’ of psychometry, written in 1848, he wrote exultantly: ‘If, then, man, in every act, leaves the impression or daguerreotype of his mental being upon the scenes of his life and subjects of his action, we are by this law furnished with a new clue to the history of our race; and I think it highly probable that, by the application of this principle, the chasms of history may be supplied, and a glimpse may be obtained of unrecorded ages and nations whose early history is lost in darkness.
The ancient manuscripts, paintings and other works of art .
.
.
are doubtless still instinct with the spirit that produced them, and capable of revealing to psychometric exploration the living realities with which they were once connected.
At present these relics are barren of significance.
Their hidden meaning lies waiting for the future explorer, as the hieroglyphics of Egypt awaited the arrival of Champollion .
.
.