AMAZING TESTS

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12248, 21 September 1925, Page 3

AMAZING TESTS

MAN WHO DIES AT WILL TORTURED FAKIR’S SWIFT RECOVERY “DEATH” AND BURIAL FOR 20 MINUTES The experiments of the Fakir. Tahra Bey, are at present the talk of Paris (writes a special correspondent)*, and his demonstrations in the little 4 'Salle Adzar” have drawn a crowd of fashionable people, eager for the latest sensation, and also a number of scientific men who have followed the results with critical observation, and yet have acknowledged themselves astonished. Tahra Bey, though a Fakir, is not an Indian but an Egyptian and a Christian of the sect of Copts. He is a young man of good but not' extraordinary physique, while his well-cut, regular features, short dark heard, large glowing eyes give him an air of great distinction. He is an educated and highly intelligent man. He does not profess to exercise supernatural powers; lie says simply that having followed a method handed down to him by his ancestors ho has, by incessant practice, acquired a control over his body far beyond anything ever attained by Western people. DRASTIC TESTS He says all this calmly, but with a tertain impressiveness, and then without mechanical aids and in the full view of his audience he proceeds to put himself into a cataleptic state. He joins hie hands together and falls into an attitude of deep meditation. Tho colour leaves his face, his expression becomes fixed, hi 9 movements slow and mechanical. Then he slowly undresses, and soon he is ready for the tests. These are drastic enough for anything. A man chosen at hazard from the audience advances, lashes tho shoulders of the Fakir with a whip, smites him with a club in the abdomen; tho Fakir gives no more response than a !og of wood. Then another of the audience, taking a large needle, runs it through his cheeks, and even into his tonsils. He drives a lance into his throat; the Fakir gives no sign of pain or even of feeling. Then he is placed on a ‘‘hurdle,’* such as was formerly used for dragging criminals to execution. The hurdle is furnished with sharp teeth, and the Fakir undergoes torture, hut he takes no notice and gives no' sign of injury. In other experiments the blood is actually drawn from what look like ghastly wounds, but immediately afterwards Tahra Bey, by the use of his system, closes up the wounds and the cicatrisation appears to be brought about immediately. BURIED FOR TWENTY MINUTES Two noted Parisian doctors, Jaworski and Yiachon, amongst other scientists, watched these tests, hut although they declared the facts to he stated, they said they were completely disconcerted in searching for an explanation. A 'ssill more spectacular experiment was in store. Tahra Bey stopped the action of the heart, his pulse was gone, his breathing ceased, he had the appearance of a dead man. In this condition he was put in a coffin and buried and covered up with sand. He remained under the earth for twenty minutes, and then having been exhumed soon came round to his normal condition. He said he was willing for the experiment to be prolonged to three hours. As to. explanations, the following is offered tsv the physiologists:—The body is controlled by two sets of nerves, one under the control of the will. These nerves serve to move the muscles, for example, of the arms ot le*?s. The muscles of the heart, and of the viscera work automatically undenthe influence of the other set of nerves—the sympathetic system. Tahra Bey has, hy training, acquired control over the 4 sympathetic nerves.