COMMENTS ON EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES ON THE NERVOUS FLUID*

[The Theosophist, Vol. III, No. 10, July 1882, pp. 255-257]

[H. P. B. comments on a review of Dr. Chevillard’s work on nervous phenomena and the rational of spiritistic manifestations in a brief introduction and some footnotes.]

The readers of this magazine, and especially the Fellows of our Society, will remember that we have always maintained that the mediumistic rapping is produced by a correlation of vital force, emitted from the person of the rapper, with the potential energy of the ether (akaśa). This theory seems to be fully corroborated by the discoveries of Professor Chevillard.
One of the best and most intelligent mediums in the world once told us that she never knew a medium, who could be called perfectly healthy, each usually having a scrofulous, phthisical, or other blood taint.
We only know Dr. Chevillard’s work through Mr. Rouher’s review, and so are not in a position to express an independent opinion as to its merits. But we see no mention in the above article about that most striking of all the mediumistic phenomena, “materialization”—the apparition of moving, and often speaking, forms believed to be those of dead persons. Nor is there any indication that
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* [Dr. A. Chevillard, Études expérimentales sur le fluide nerveux et solution définitive du problème spirite. Paris: Corbeil, 1869. 8vo.]
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either author or reviewer has ever seen the projection of the “double” or Mayavi rupa, of a living man. A vast unexplored field invites the researches of the European men of science, and we trust that the announced intention of the great French Academy to take up the work, may not end in promises. Anyhow, our Asiatic readers now see that Occult Science is beginning to have from Western biologists the attention it deserves.

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