WEIGHT OF THE SOUL

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10963, 4 May 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

WEIGHT OF THE SOUL

CURIOUS EXPERIMENTS.

NEW YORK, March 11. Dr Duncan Macdougall, of Haverhill, and four other reputable physicians of Massachusetts, after six years' experiments m a sanatorium, assert that tho souls of men and women weigh from h.lf an ounce to au ounce. The physicians themselves regard the publication of the results of their experiments as premature, and had intended to make them public through a medical journal. The investigation, they say was undertaken reverently, and with the object of determining the existence or non-ex-istence of the soul m the human body, and whether the" departure of the soul from the body was attended by any manifestation of nature evident' to the material senses. -

The method employed was to wheel the bed of a dying patient upon platform scales especially constructed for the purpose. The scales were so delicate that they were sensitive to a_weight of less than a tenth of an ounce.

In every case loss of weight was sho vn upon death, after all known scientific deductions for such loss as the respiratory air, moisture, excretions, and secretions of the body had been taken into consideration. ThY first two subjects ■were consumptive men, and a difference was shown, immediately upon death. The third patient ; was a phlegmatic man, slow m thought and action, and a minute elapsed before the movement of the' soales. ,

Dr Hereward Carrington, a New York associate, and Dr Hyslop, of the Society for Psychical Research; say that the conclusive proof that the soul is matter is of the' highest scientific importance. They object to tests on sick persons as inconclusive, and suggest that tests be made with healthy murderers : put to death m the electric chair. • ; . ;...

Great interest, says the Tribune, London, has been aroused, by the annouriceimeut of the so-called !disdovery by five Massachusetts doctors" that the human soul is matter, and can be weighed, v English medical men ridicule the theory. One of the. best known doctors iri Lqndon, a. high official _o-i---tion, informed a representative of The Tribune that thie generally accepted location'of the soul by students ol. anatomy is what 'is knowri. as the pinel gland, which is situated near the brain, and was discovered by Dr Philippe Pinel, a> French physician (1745-1826), who gained world-wide fame by his reformation of the joldT barbarous methods of treating the insane.- '•'•'' ■'... ..'."" ;' !

In works on ariatomy, however, rioth.ing is said of any matter leaving this gland on the death of its possessor, and it would .be , absolutely impossible,, the doctor continued, /for any scientist, by using any, scales, however fine,: to prove that such was the case. He brushed on one side the argument that full allow_nce was niade m the tests for, bodily secretions, excretions, and moisture, arid said it is not conceivable that any accurate allowance for those things could be obtained. '„■'•;;. .'• "' ;' * —

The doctor said he could fully understand the regret of Dr MacDougall that the result of .the so-called experiments had been prematurely made known arid "exposed to , the. taunts of the incredulous." It would, indeed, .he have been a "bonne bouctte" for April Ist.