In nearly all of the so-called investigations of the “rappings” produced by the “Fox Sisters,” there was an absolute absence of genuine scientific inquiry. Only once in this critical stage of their career, did they submit to experiment and examination by doctors of unquestioned repute and learning. The result of this investigation has been held up by professional spiritualists as a triumphant proof that the source of “rappings” was beyond any mortal finding out. The fact is that the doctors hit upon the right principle at the inception of the inquiry, but were misled into a wrong application of it, an error which the “mediums,” of course, encouraged up to a certain point, so that they might gain prestige afterwards by refuting it. Following out this policy, Mrs. Underhill has incorporated in her book the testimony of the doctors, heedless of the law of destiny, that truth must prevail finally.
I propose to take this same statement of the doctors, based as it is upon an erroneous assumption and a correct theory, and show how strongly it sustains and plainly corroborates the explanation of the “rappings” now given by Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Jencken.
The gentlemen who made this notable investigation are usually spoken of as the “Buffalo doctors.” They were members of the faculty of the University of Buffalo. Austin Flint, who afterward held the highest medical rank in the metropolis, was the most prominent of the three. The other two were Drs. Charles A. Lee and C. B. Coventry.
The theory that they advanced was that the mysterious noises were produced by some one of the articulations of the body. Their assumption was that it was the great joint of the knee which produced them. Had they worked upon their theory alone, and left all assumption aside, until actual evidence had led up to them; or, even had they investigated other joints of the lower limbs, besides that of the knee, they must have inevitably arrived at the correct conclusion. Unfortunately, however, the idea which so beset them as to render their labor abortive, arose from the actual existence in Buffalo of a woman whose knee-joints could be snapped audibly at will.
The closeness of the scrutiny applied by these gentlemen displeased the eldest “medium,” and her resentment finds characteristic expression in her volume, printed thirty-seven years after the occurrence. She declares that she found Dr. Lee to be “a wily, deceitful man.”
If anything can circumvent cunning, it is certainly cunning itself, and in this sense, it is entirely laudable when exerted in a proper cause. There is no doubt that strategy had to be used to induce this woman, conscious of her falsity, and schooled in subterfuges and evasions, to submit to a coldly scientific test. The challenge, however, came under such circumstances, public suspicion being so whetted by the fact that a woman had been discovered whose knee-joints possessed the peculiar quality of making sound, that it could not well be avoided, without it becoming generally known that the declination was a tacit confession of fraud.
The doctors published very promptly the result of their preliminary examination, which was made without any special faculties being afforded them.
They said:
“Curiosity having led us to visit the rooms at the Phelps House, in which two females from Rochester, Mrs. Fish and Miss Fox, profess to exhibit striking manifestations from the spirit world, by means of which communion may be had with deceased friends, etc.; and having arrived at a physiological explanation of the phenomena, the correctness of which has been demonstrated in an instance which has since fallen under our observation, we have felt that a public statement is called for, which may, perhaps, serve to prevent a further waste of time, money and credulity (to say nothing of sentiment and philosophy) in connection with this so long successful imposition.
“The explanation is reached almost by a logical necessity, on the application of a method of reasoning much resorted to in the diagnosis of diseases, namely, the reasoning by exclusion.