[48] Lafontaine, who also studied Angelica's case, says that "when she brought her left wrist near a lighted candle, the flame bent over horizontally, as if continually blown upon." (L'art de magnetiser, p. 273).
M. Pelletier observed the same thing in the case of some of his subjects, when they brought the palm of the hand near a candle.
Specialists call these points "hypnogenic points," from which fluidic streams radiate.
[49] Arago.—Trans.
[50] Études et lectures sur les sciences d'observations, vol. II., 1856.
[51] Des Tables tournantes, du Surnaturel en général, et des Esprits, par le comte Agénor de Gasparin, Paris, Dentu, 1854.
[52] The lady who soon after was styled "the medium."
[53] This was the only table with casters that the operators made use of.
[54] The allusion is to Faraday's explanation of Arago's discovery in the magnetism of rotation. Faraday showed that a rotating disk of non-magnetic metal would draw after it in similar rotation a magnetic needle suspended over it, and even a heavy magnet. See Professor Tyndall's Faraday as a Discoverer, pp. 25, 26.—Trans.
[55] The long scene from which this is taken in Molière is so full of Italian, Old French, and dog Latin, that it has not been translated by Van Laun. All but the last word (juro) of each stanza is spoken by the big-wigs in this mock examination of a baccalaureate medical student; that word is his: