WATER DIVINING

Manawatu Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 4600, 23 January 1936, Page 2

WATER DIVINING

The first piece of scientific work in England on water divining was carried out by Mr G. A. M. Lintott in the Physiological Department at Guy’s Hospital and in Sussex during the last few months of the late Pi’ofessor M. S. Pembrey’s tenure of the chair of physiology at Guy’s. Though the nature of the radiation from the spring to the individual is as obscure as ever, he says, at least We have knowledge of certain facts as the result of this yrorik. The movement of the twig or other apparatus is due to an increased tone of the muscles of the forearm, and possibly all the muscles in the body take part: this has been proved as far* as one of the jaw muscles (the masseter muscle) is concerned, and it may also be true elsewhere, as is instanced by the shuffling gait adopted by experienced dowsers by which they voluntarily increase the tone in their lower limbs to turn themselves in, as it were, for the reception of the stimulus. When the subject is fatigued or off colour his power of increasing the tone of his muscles ib diminished and the results are not so good. The fact that water divining is impossible on a smooth glass surface is not due to resistance to any hypothetical electric disturbance, but merely because it is so slippery that it is impossible to hold the body rigid.