Observations placeholder

First of all, I must tell you ....what this Institute is that I talk about so often.  Recognized as a public utility, headed by and including a large part of our scientific lights such as Berthelot, Ch. Richet, d'Arsonval, E. Perrier, C. Flammarion, etc., its purpose, as its name suggests, is to discover and study all psychological phenomena.  Under these conditions, all the experiments made within it must be considered as bearing a true seal of authenticity.

That being said, what was the first thought of these gentlemen, who were charged with carrying out all possible research on me?

In the interest of this research itself, and following a logical and understandable rule, they had to see if I was not an impostor.

This question was very easy to clarify.

I claimed to be insensitive to the hands..., so it was this particularity that they had to tackle first.

To do this, invited to sit in front of the piano, they asked for my permission to blindfold me.

By submitting to their wishes, I then put myself in the position of any pianist preparing to perform a piece.

Having asked me to inform them when I felt insensitivity coming, I waited patiently for the moment when I could tell them that it was coming.

The experimenter, Dr. Pierron (it was he who was attached to me during these three months of experiments) then said to me: "Be careful, Mr. Aubert, I will prick your left hand."

No movement on my part detected any sensitivity whatsoever, since I felt nothing.

But I knew, after the experiment had been repeated several times, that Mr. Pierron had wanted to deceive me.

Indeed, whilst warning me of a prick on my left hand, he was pricking my right hand!

You will easily understand that a faker, paying attention to his left hand, which he had been told would be hurt, could not have masked an instinctive movement of surprise, since it was his right hand that was being pricked.

One cannot rely too much on this deception, not that I criticize it, because it was necessary, in my opinion; but, the complaint that I had a spiritual mentality (sic!!!) and did not understand the necessity of the experiments, is absolutely not true.  As I say, I have never criticized these gentlemen from the Institute for trying to see in me a faker. They wouldn't have done it, if they had been wrong.  I would like to add once again that I am grateful to Mr. Pierron and his co-experimenters for having started with that.

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The experiment I have just described was simple and classic.

Several times in the course of the tests it was renewed and complicated as follows.

You certainly know that the eye is an extremely sensitive organ and, in a way, a mirror of internal nervous impressions.  The fear of any suffering and the existence of this suffering itself causes very clear movements of dilation of the pupil.

It is on this principle that the following test was based:

A lit candle was approached ten centimetres from my eyes, which determined the maximum contraction of the pupil.

At that moment, with or without warning, I was pricked on one of my hands, either underneath or above. It is obvious that if I had been a common fraudster, the fear of the prick and its sensation would undoubtedly have caused a movement of pupillary dilation, which, however small, would have been easily detected because the intensive lighting of the organ made it considerably easier to observe.

In this case, unerringly, my good faith was demonstrated, especially since this movement of the pupil is absolutely independent of the will and it is impossible for anyone to contract or dilate this organ for the needs of the cause.

Well, despite repeated attempts, all of the tests were successful in demonstrating .... the insensitivity of the hands.