The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864. Various
the poor girl as an impostor.
That, without any inquiry into the antecedents of the patient, without the slightest attempt to obtain from those medical men who had followed up the case from its commencement what they had observed, and that, in advance of the strict examination which it was their duty to make, they should insult the unfortunate girl by declaring that they intended to find out the tricks with which she had been attempting to deceive them,—all this is not the less lamentable because it is common among those, who sit in the high places of science.
If these Academicians had been moved by a simple love of truth, not urged by a self-complacent eagerness to display their own sagacity, they might have found a more probable explanation of the cessation, after their first session, of some of Angelique's chief powers.
Such an explanation is furnished to us by Dr. Tanchon, who was present, by invitation, at the sittings of the committee.
He informs us that, at their first sitting, held at the Jardin des Plantes, on the seventeenth of February, after the committee had witnessed, twice repeated, the violent displacement of a chair held with all his strength by one of their number, (M. Rayet,) instead of following up similar experiments and patiently waiting to observe the phenomena as they presented themselves, they proceeded at once to satisfy their own preconceptions. They brought Angélique into contact with a voltaic battery. Then they placed on the bare arm of the child a dead frog, anatomically prepared after the manner of Matteucci, that is, the skin removed, and the animal dissected so as to expose the lumbar nerves. By a galvanic current, they caused this frog to move, apparently to revive, on the girl's arm. The effect upon her may be imagined. The ignorant child, terrified out of her senses, spoke of nothing else the rest of the day, dreamed of dead frogs coming to life all night, and began to talk eagerly about it again the first thing the next morning.18 From that time her attractive and repulsive powers gradually declined.
In addition to the privilege of much accumulated learning, in addition to the advantages of varied scientific research, we must have something else, if we would advance yet farther in true knowledge. We must be imbued with a simple, faithful spirit, not presuming, not preoccupied. We must be willing to sit down at the feet of Truth, humble, patient, docile, single-hearted. We must not be wise in our own conceit; else the fool's chance is better than ours, to avoid error, and distinguish truth.
M. Cohu, a medical man of Mortagne, writing, in March, 1846, in reply to some inquiries of Dr. Tanchon, after stating that the phenomenon of the chair, repeatedly observed by himself, had been witnessed also by more than a thousand persons, adds,—"It matters not what name we may give to this; the important point is, to verify the reality of a repulsive agency, and of one that is distinctly marked; the effects it is impossible to deny. We may assign to this agency what seat we please, in the cerebellum, in the pelvis, or elsewhere; the fact is material, visible, incontestable. Here in the Province, Sir, we are not very learned, but we are often very mistrustful. In the present case we have examined, reëxamined, taken every possible precaution against deception; and the more we have seen, the deeper has been our conviction of the reality of the phenomenon. Let the Academy decide as it will. We have seen; it has not seen. We are, therefore, in a condition to decide better than it can, I do not say what cause was operating, but what effects presented themselves, under circumstances that remove even the shadow of a doubt."19
M. Hébert, too, states a truth of great practical value, when he remarks, that, in the examination of phenomena of so fugitive and seemingly capricious a character, involving the element of vitality, and the production of which at any given moment depends not upon us, we "ought to accommodate ourselves to the nature of the fact, not insist that it should accommodate itself to us."
For myself, I do not pretend to offer any positive opinion as to what was ultimately the real state of the case. I do not assume to determine whether the attractive and repulsive phenomena, after continuing for upwards of a month, happened to be about to cease at the very time the committee began to observe them,—or whether the harsh suspicious and terror-inspiring tests of these gentlemen so wrought on the nervous system of an easily daunted and superstitious girl, that some of her abnormal powers, already on the wane, presently disappeared,—or whether the poor child, it may be at the instigation of her parents, left without the means of support,20 really did at last simulate phenomena that once were real, manufacture a counterfeit of what was originally genuine. I do not take upon myself to decide between these various hypotheses. I but express my conviction, that, for the first few weeks at least, the phenomena actually occurred,—and that, had not the gentlemen of the Academy been very unfortunate or very injudicious, they could not have failed to perceive their reality. And I seek in vain some apology for the conduct of these learned Academicians, called upon to deal with a case so fraught with interest to science, when I find them, merely because they do not at once succeed in personally verifying sufficient to convince them of the existence of certain novel phenomena, not only neglecting to seek evidence elsewhere, but even rejecting that which a candid observer had placed within their reach.
This appears to have been the judgment of the medical public of Paris. The "Gazette des Hôpitaux," in its issue of March 17, 1846, protests against the committee's mode of ignoring the matter, declaring that it satisfied nobody. "Not received!" said the editor (alluding to the words of the report); "that would be very convenient, if it were only possible!"21
And the "Gazette Médicale" very justly remarks,—"The non-appearance of the phenomena at such or such a given moment proves nothing in itself. It is but a negative fact, and, as such, cannot disprove the positive fact of their appearance at another moment, if that be otherwise satisfactorily attested." And the "Gazette" goes on to argue, from the nature of the facts, that it is in the highest degree improbable that they should have been the result of premeditated imposture.
The course adopted by the Academy's committee is the less defensible, because, though the attractive and repulsive phenomena ceased after their first session, other phenomena, sufficiently remarkable, still continued. As late as the tenth of March, the day after the committee made their report, Angélique being then at Dr. Tanchon's house, a table touched by her apron, while her hands were behind her and her feet fifteen inches distant from it, was raised entirely from the ground, though no part of her body touched it. This was witnessed, besides Dr. Tanchon, by Dr. Charpentier-Méricourt, who had stationed himself so as to observe it from the side. He distinctly saw the table rise, with all four legs, from the floor, and he noticed that the two legs of the table farthest from the girl rose first. He declares, that, during the whole time, he perceived not the slightest movement either of her hands or her feet; and he regarded deception, under the circumstances, to be utterly impossible.22
On the twelfth of March, in presence of five physicians, Drs. Amédée Latour, Lachaise, Deleau, Pichard, and Soulé, the same phenomenon occurred twice.
And yet again on the fourteenth, four physicians being present, the table was raised a single time, but with startling force. It was of mahogany, with two drawers, and was four feet long by two feet and a half wide. We may suppose it to have weighed some fifty or sixty pounds; so that the girl's power, in this particular, appears to have much decreased since that day, about the end of January, when M. de Farémont saw repeatedly raised from the ground a block of one hundred and fifty pounds' weight, with three men seated on it,—in all, not less than five to six hundred pounds.
By the end of March the whole of the phenomena had almost totally ceased; and it does not appear that they have ever shown themselves since that time.
Dr. Tanchon considered them electrical. M. de Farémont seems to have doubted that they were strictly so. In a letter, dated Monti-Mer, November 1, 1846, and addressed to the Marquis de Mirville, that gentleman says,—"The electrical effects I have seen produced in this case varied so much,—since under certain circumstances good conductors operated, and then again, in others, no effect was observable,—that, if one follows the ordinary laws of electrical phenomena, one finds evidence both for and against. I am well convinced, that, in the case of this child, there is some power other than electricity."
M. Cholet, the individual who, in the hope of gain, furnished the funds to bring Angélique to Paris for exhibition, as soon as he perceived that the speculation was a failure, left the girl and her parents in that city, dependent on the charity of strangers for daily support, and for the means of returning to their humble home.—
"Non avenues! ce serait commode, si c'était possible!"