Keely and His Discoveries: Aerial Navigation

by Mrs. Bloomfield H. Moore

One of Mr. Keely’s discoveries shapes his theory that all nervous and brain disorders may be cured by equating the differentiation that exists in the disordered structure. When his system is completed, medical men will have a new domain opened to them for experiment. Gross material agencies, such as drugs, will be replaced by the finer forces of nature: light, as taught by the late Dr. Pancoast of our city, and magnetism, as experimented with by the late Professor Keil of Jena, showing the efficacy of the ordinary magnet in the cure of certain infirmities,—these experiments were communicated by him more than fifty years since to the Royal Society of London.

Paracelsus taught that man is nourished and sustained by magnetic power, which he called the universal motor of nature. In Switzerland, in Italy and in France, the light-treatment is now being tested; red light used in cases of melancholia; blue light in cases of great nervous excitement, operating like magic in some instances. Dr. Oscar Jennings, the electrician at St. Anne’s Hospital for the Insane in Paris, tells me that students, versed in Biblical lore, declare that the esoteric teachings of the Book of Job enunciate a system of light-cure. Ostensibly because of my faith in the importance of Keely’s discoveries, as opening up new fields of research to medical men, an invalid daughter (suffering from puerperal mania after the birth of her third child) was taken from me, in conformance with orders of the Swedish guardian of her monied interests in Sweden, and I was summoned before the Police Direction, in Vienna, and required to bind myself not to experiment upon my child. It is well known to the London experts in mental disorders, the most distinguished of whom I have consulted, that my daughter’s treatment, while she was under my care, had been confined to giving no medicine, forcing no food, and such changes from time to time in her surroundings as she needed, with a few electric baths.

The orthodox practice of medicine is nothing more and nothing less than “a system of blind experiment,” as it has been called.

At the opening of a clinical society in London, Sir Thomas Watson said: “We try this and not succeeding we try that, and baffled again we try something else.” Other eminent medical men have given utterance to these aphorisms: “The science of medicine is founded on conjecture and improved by murder;” “Mercury has made more cripples than war;” “Ninety-nine medical facts are medical lies;” “Every dose of medicine is a blind experiment;” “The older physicians grow the more sceptical they become of the virtues of their own medicines.” Dr. Ridge said: “Everything in nature is acknowledged to be governed by law. It is singular, however, that while science endeavours to reduce this to actual fact in all other studies, those of health and disease have not hitherto been arranged under any law whatever.”

Keely’s system, should he live to complete it, will show that nature works under one law in everything; that discord is disease, that harmony is health. He believes that nervous and brain disorders are curable; but he will never have the leisure to enter this field of research himself, and it will be left for physicians to pursue their experiments to that point where they shall be able to decide whether he is right or wrong. This is why I seek to interest medical men in Keely’s belief; his theories of latent energy he is able to handle without help, and to demonstrate a solid foundation for them on facts. “Nothing can lie like a fact,” said Velpeau. But nature’s laws are infallible facts, and the facts referred to by Velpeau are of the order of the fallible ones enunciated by science, such as “The atom is indivisible.” “The atom is infinitely divisible,” says Keely, repeating Schopenhauer’s words, whose writings I dare say he has never read.

Professor George Fr. Fitzgerald, of Trinity College, Dublin, in closing a lecture delivered before the British Association last March, on “Electro-magnetic Radiation,” enunciates a possible theory of ether and matter. This hypothesis, he says, explains the differences in nature as differences of motion. If it be true, ether and matter—gold, air, wood, brains—are but different motions. You will be able to judge of the marvellous mechanism invented by Keely, for his researches, when I tell you that by his demonstrations with these instruments, he is able to place this hypothesis in the rank of theories, boldly announcing that all motion is thought, and that all force is mind force. With a clearness that characterizes his great brain he has plunged through the deep and broad questions surrounding the mechanism of the universe, and he claims, on behalf of science, as did the late Provost Jellett of the British Association, “the right to prosecute its investigations until it attains to a mechanical explanation of all things.”

In this lecture Professor Fitzgerald, commenting upon Professor Hertz’s experiments in the vibration of ether waves, says: “If there is reason to think that any greater oscillation might disintegrate the atom, we are still a long way from it.” Does not this statement border on an admission that the atom may be divisible? Those who are pursuing their researches in this field are farther off than they know from the great central truth which Faraday did not live long enough to reach, although conjectured by him.

We have not only Faraday’s discoveries, but those of Scheele, the Swedish chemist, as an example of exact observations leading to erroneous conclusions. The investigations of Scheele led up to the rich harvest which has since been reaped from a knowledge of the nature of the compounds of organic chemistry. Scheele was one of the founders of quantitative analysis, but the phlogistic theory advanced by him was overthrown—the fate of all theories which are not based on solid foundations. Faraday admitted that his own ideas on gravitating force, and of the ether, were but vague impressions of his mind thrown out as matter for speculation. He left no theory on these lines, for he had nothing to offer as the result of demonstration, nor even of sufficient consideration to broach a theory: merely impressions, which are allowable for a time as guides to thought and farther research. Yet more than once did these speculations of his giant intellect touch upon one of nature’s hidden laws, the greatest one yet made known to man. Had Faraday lived long enough to pursue his researches, from his starting point of conjecture, he would have been, without doubt, instead of Keely, the discoverer of the latent or hidden potencies existing in all forms of matter, visible and invisible. But the physicists of his time looked upon his speculations as contrary to the received dogmas of science, and preferred their own errors to his speculations. They saw the signpost, but took the road directly opposite to the one Faraday had pointed out.

It is admitted that even a false theory, when rightly constructed, has its uses, and that, instead of hindering, it hastens the advance of knowledge. Every one, possessing the slightest acquaintance with the history of astronomy, knows that the doctrines of cycles, epicycles and ellipses, were begotten naturally and necessarily out of each other; and that if Kepler had not propounded speculative errors Newton would not have hit upon speculative truth. It has been said that when men of science disclaim hypotheses, or speculation, they are either unfit for their vocation or, like Newton, they are better than their creed. Hypotheses are at once the effect and the cause of progress. One might as well attempt to preserve and employ an army without organization as to preserve and employ phenomena without a theory to weld them into one. But the theory must be provisionally, if not positively, true; it must be intelligible and consistent; it must explain a greater number of facts and reconcile a greater variety of apparent contradictions than any which has preceded it; and it must have become developed not by the addition merely, but by the addition and solution, of subsidiary explanations. I ask of you an examination of Keely’s theories before giving an opinion of them.

Time only can decide whether Keely’s hypotheses and theories will outlive these tests. If not, his system must be overthrown, as past systems have been, to make room for a better one. All that I ask is that he may have the opportunity to develop it under your encouragement. There are scientists in Europe ready to assist him with pecuniary assistance. They know enough—those who are interested in his discoveries—to know that they can help him in no other way.