The 1907 Psychokinetic Experiments of Professor Filippo Bottazzi

Antonio Giuditta

Department of Biological Sciences, University “Federico II” Via Mezzocannone 8, Naples 80134 Italy giuditta@unina.it

Reprint requests to giuditta@unina.it

Abstract—If we define the Thomas Prejudice (Doubting Thomas) as the habit of trusting only your own sensory capacities, Professor Filippo Bottazzi was imbued with it when rumors of the wondrous psychokinetic (PK) performances of Eusapia Palladino reached his ear at the turn of the last century. Aiming to find out for himself, he persuaded distinguished professors at the Royal University of Naples to join him in a series of sessions held with Eusapia at the Institute of Physiology he directed. The outstanding data obtained in eight such sessions were masterfully described in a book Bottazzi published one century ago (1909). The main interest of these observations regards the instrumental recording of PK movements Eusapia learned to perform. Most notably, she succeeded in simultaneously pressing two electric keys, one with her natural arm, the other with her anomalous limb. These and related observations convinced Bottazzi that PK events required Eusapia to extend and operate an anomalous limb endowed with sensory and motor features comparable with those of her natural arms. Such anomalous limb was controlled by the same brain/mind that modulated her natural arms.

Keywords: psychokinesis (PK)—Eusapia Palladino—medium—physiologi-cal anomaly—mediumistic cabinet (MC)—mediumistic table (MT)

Figure 1. A) Professor Filippo Bottazzi. B) Eusapia Palladino.

As nicely mentioned in the Introduction to his book, Bottazzi (Figure 1A and Box 1) was initially skeptical of or indifferent to reports of Eusapia’s outstanding performances. His conversion took place when he read in national newspapers of Eusapia’s feats at the Turin Institute of Physiology. Having decided to look at comparable events with his own eyes, he alerted several colleagues, contacted Eusapia (Figure 1B and Box 1) through a common friend, and succeeded in persuading her to participate in sessions held at his Institute.

It is appropriate to point out that essentially all Eusapia’s anomalous phenomena described in Bottazzi’s book (1909) had been previously observed in numerous sessions held in different European countries and in the United States (Aksakof, Schiaparelli, Du Prel, Brofferio, Gerosa, et al., 1893, Carrington, 1909, de Rochas, 1906, Courtier, 1908, Dingwall, 1962, Lodge, 1894). The results of these sessions, obtained under conditions that differed somewhat in scientific rigor, gave way to endless, often harsh discussions mainly dealing with the reality of phenomena often attributed to Eusapia’s trickery and/or to participants’ hallucinations.Only in some sessions were subjective descriptions supported by objective methods, largely photography. To my knowledge, Bottazzi’s experiments were among the first to provide extensive instrumental verification of PK events in addition to subjective accounts. His results were also reported in a multi-part paper in English (Bottazzi, 1907).

Outline of the Experimental Setup

Sessions were scheduled in the spring of 1907, the first seven at 3–4 day intervals (from April 17 to May 11), the last session on July 5. Experiments lasted a few hours and were scheduled to take place in late evening when the Institute of Physiology was empty. Only a trustworthy technician or Bottazzi’s assistant were occasionally present, but away from the experimental room which was remotely located. Of its three doors and one window, the door opposite the entrance door and the window on the right wall when entering the room were locked. The door on the left wall was also locked as it constituted the back partition of the mediumistic cabinet (MC). This rested in a deep recess in the wall (Figure 2A), and was closed in front by two black curtains hung on a high pole. The MC contained objects of various types (see below) which were placed on a wooden board, chair, or stool. Some of them were changed in different sessions. Several cables went through the door connecting MC instruments with recording apparatus (cylinders lined with smoked paper), which was placed in the adjacent room, also locked (Figure 2B). One or more pens transmitted signals to rotating cylinders. Eusapia was never informed of objects and instruments placed in the MC, and she never appeared interested in finding out about them.

A table (mediumistic table or MT) and several chairs were placed in front of the curtains (Figure 2A). Eusapia always sat at the MT’s short side with her shoulder facing the closed curtains. Apart from a couch and a small table to the left of the entrance door and some shelves on the left wall, the experimental room was essentially bare. Four independent lamps provided decreasing intensities of white or red light, and at some point a rheostat was inserted in the circuit of the dimmest lamp to further lower its intensity. Light was generally dimmed during sessions, and it was turned off only on specific occasions (e.g., when Eusapia was asked to impress a photographic plate by holding her hands near it). In the overwhelming majority of cases, light was sufficiently intense to allow clear vision of Eusapia, people, and ongoing events. Of the participating professors (usually 6 to 8), two or more firmly held Eusapia’s hands, arms, and legs. Only in the last session were Eusapia’s wrists secured by inextensible strips fixed to the floor. Bottazzi’s wife attended some sessions, and a married couple interested in spiritism (Mr. and Mrs. H. B.) attended the seventh session.

Reports were prepared by Bottazzi after each session or the following morning, sometimes after a sleepless night when events had been particularly impressive. Differences of opinion among participants occurred seldom, and only on specific issues. They were adequately discussed before an agreement was reached. The wealth of interactions among participants, Eusapia, and the spirit of her putative father (John King) raised a wide spectrum of emotions,

Figure 2. A) Experimental room showing the MT and the MC cabinet. The latter was delimited in the back by the locked door and in front by two black curtains.

B) Recording cylinders placed on the other side of the locked door in the adjoining room, which was also locked.

depending on the favorable or inquisitorial attitude of people, and on Eusapia’s appropriate reactions. Friendly exchanges progressively increased with sessions.

As Bottazzi’s main objective was to record PK activation of MC instruments, Eusapia had to learn unfamiliar finer movements rather than move large heavy objects as she was used to doing. As a result, a number of inconveniences occurred in the first two sessions, in which instruments were not secured to their supports, and supports were shaken by Eusapia’s anomalous limb. In the following sessions, supports and instruments were immobilized, Eusapia was better trained, and PK events started to be recorded. This overall pattern was reflected in the number of pages dedicated to each session, which jumped from 8–10 for the first two sessions to an average of 29 for the following five sessions.

Bottazzi’s observations will be described under the separate headings of instrumentally recorded and non-recorded events. This choice will hopefully allow an exhaustive account, but will remain short of rendering the flavor of Bottazzi’s writing, mixing facts with logical considerations and quiet humor.

 

from a letter-weighing scale connected to a recording cylinder. When Bottazzi asked Eusapia to lower the scale plate with the anomalous limb (her natural hands being duly guarded), the pen wrote a horizontal line for several turns before fingers protruding from the left curtain resolutely advanced toward the MT, took hold of the scale plate, and markedly depressed it (Figure 4B) before quickly retracting and disappearing. Controls done the following day indicated that the scale plate was pressed by an equivalent weight of about 370 g.

Signals were also obtained from an electric key placed in a wooden box firmly secured to its support, but what happened was that after several unsuccessful attempts, the wooden box was vigorously pulled out from its support and the key furiously pressed (not shown). As in previous sessions, dishes with clay or mastic were placed in the MC for Eusapia to cast a face or a hand. In this session, Eusapia grabbed Bottazzi’s three middle fingers and started rubbing their tips on the MT. She then whispered that something hard was on the chair supporting the clay dish, and asked it to be taken away. When somebody did, three fingertip impressions were found rubbed in the clay (not shown).

Figure 5. A) Signals from the electric key placed on the MT and operated by Eusapia’s natural arm (trace 1), and from the MC key operated by Eusapia’s anomalous limb (trace 2). The former signal occurred initially independently but later in synchrony with the anomalous signal. Synchronicity was indicated by either signal occurring at the same time on the rotating cylinder. Isolated and grouped signals were also recorded from the activated metronome (trace 3).

B) Isolated and synchronous signals obtained by Eusapia using her natural arm to act on the MT key (trace 2) and her anomalous limb to act on the MC key (trace 1).

In the sixth session, something relevant occurred. In previous sessions, Eusapia had proudly demonstrated her PK capacity to knock on two different objects (small drum, electric key in the MC and on the MT). This led Bottazzi, as soon as an MC key started to be pressed, to place a second key on the MT and ask Eusapia to synchronously press both keys using her natural arm for the MT key and her anomalous limb for the MC key. Isolated and synchronous signals were obtained from both keys (Figure 5A). The panel also shows, albeit not clearly, that isolated and grouped signals were also obtained from the activated metronome. While grouped signals could be attributed to blows on the supporting table, isolated signals occurred when the table was still, which demonstrated metronome activation that only a hand could have produced.

In the seventh session, two main events were recorded. The first one regardedthe repetition of Eusapia’s synchronous pressing of two keys using her natural and anomalous limbs (Figure 5B). Signals from a single key were often followed by synchronous signals from the other key. Signals from the two keys differed from each other, the MC signal being consistently briefer and markedly stronger than the MT signal. This difference was acoustically evident. The MC key appeared to receive strong knocks while the MT key received normal beats.

The second main event regarded signals produced by a small Gaiffe’s magneto–electric instrument adjusted to behave as a rotatory switch activated by turning a circular handle. Groups of signals from this instrument are shown in Figure 5B (line 4). As the circular handle could not be turned by one hand (a second hand was needed to keep the instrument steady), signals reflected the coordinate action of two hands.

In the eighth session that was scheduled for almost two months later, the main event concerned episodes of MT levitation which were photographed (not shown).

Eusapia’s Behavior

As Eusapia was left-handed, most of her muscle contractions were in her left limbs, while PK events occurred more often on her right side, as remarked by Bottazzi and other observers. In the spring of 1907, Eusapia was aged and in bad health; urines collected before and after sessions were highly acidic and contained albumin, uric acid crystals, and copious sediment. Eusapia was highly emotional, sensitive to weather changes, and apparently of mediocre intelligence. She was quite proud of her extraordinary capacities and did not appreciate their being doubted. She could forcefully react to unpleasant comments, and intuitively sensed friendly or inquisitorial attitudes.

At the end of the second session, she was delirious and uttered incoherent sentences. A hysterical fit caught her at the sudden turning of light. In the third session she was in trance during most of the PK events, uttered incoherent words, and gave sighs while her muscles were relaxed and her face transfigured. When the weather was humid and heavy, as in the fourth session, she was irritable and in a bad mood, but her mood was good with better weather. The friendly presence of Bottazzi’s wife also improved her mood. While in trance, she asked to be helped by being touched by someone, but she could also reply to unfavorable comments with disdain or scornful laughing. Interestingly, she showed vivid pain when somebody touched or attempted to remove an object just brought out from the MC, as if the object had remained connected for a while to a very sensitive region or feature of her body. During sessions, Eusapia engaged in conversation with participants, especially with Bottazzi. She spoke most often with her natural voice, but at times her voice resembled that of John King. After sessions, her hands remained oversensitive and painful, notably at their back. They were red and hot, and showed engorged veins.

Eusapia’s Failures

In the second session, she failed to discharge a gold-leaf electroscope, activate a metronome, lower a scale plate, or press a pear-shaped rubber object. Bottazzi was glad to mention these initial failures, because in later sessions she succeeded in performing comparable operations, which showed that they had been learned.

In the third session, Eusapia was unable to move a stool presumably because it was less easy to grab than the table she had moved during the previous session. She also failed to rotate a recording cylinder, impress photographic plates, or discharge an electroscope.

In the fourth session, no PK events took place during the first 45 minutes, as a new participant attended the session. She was also unable to stop the metronome she had previously activated.

In the fifth session, Eusapia failed to impress photographic plates, operate a switch hurled on the MT, or maintain her promise to materializea female figure.

In the sixth session, a plate with platinum-cyanide did not become luminescent when overlaid by her hands or head in the dark. Furthermore, she was unable to activate a telegraph key placed inside a wired cage. Feeling very tired, she was unable to operate on several objects placed on the MT (a metronome, a balance plate, a small bottle).

In the seventh session, she was unable to impress a face on a layer of clay, or to activate a key placed inside a cage that was only partly secured to its support.

Bottazzi’s General Considerations and Conclusions

Three main hypotheses were considered by Bottazzi: the fraudulent, the spiritist, and the biological hypotheses. According to the first alternative, PK phenomena were not real but merely the result of a fraud operated by the medium and/or the outcome of collective hallucinations. Conversely, PK events were accepted as real by the last two hypotheses, which respectively attributed them to the intervention of dead people or to the medium’s own anomalous capacities.

Bottazzi began his considerations byexamining the factual and psychological basis of the fraudulent hypothesis, notably with regard to Eusapia’s previous performances, and to the alleged claims of her tendency to operate fraud. He assumed mediumistic events to be a special type of biological phenomena, noting that they displayed comparable variability. Hence, mediumistic events could not be expected to occur with comparable intensity at all times and under different conditions. Just as a few physiological experiments could not be expected to lead to definite conclusions, likewise single mediumistic performances cannot be accepted as the basis for careless generalization. Only repeated and well-controlled observations made by reliable people should be trusted, such as those by distinguished Italian and European professors who witnessed and accepted the reality of Eusapia’s performances.

In sessions at Bottazzi’s institute, PK events always occurred under conditions definitely excluding fraud. Eusapia’s hands, arms, and legs were constantly secured and monitored by him and other watchful participants. Furthermore, the release of Eusapia’s natural hands or limbs from their guardian’s hold was never observed. In addition, i) moved objects were either too far from the reach of Eusapia’s natural limbs or too heavy for Eusapia’s declining strength; ii) several objects were seen to move by themselves, at times for minutes. This was clearly observed by several alert participants, thereby excluding collective hallucination; iii) Bottazzi himself and another participant on different occasions had seen anomalous limbs emerge from Eusapia’s arm or shoulder before quickly retreating and vanishing into her body. Lastly, PK events were consistently synchronous with Eusapia’s muscle contractions.

Bottazzi also remarked that the famous Eusapia’s hair she was claimed to have fraudulently used to move objects, had been seen but never retrieved. This remark prompts me to add that novel observations in science (notably in biology) are often doubted, marginalized, or neglected. At variance with them, doubts do not seem to require compelling supporting evidence. Their impact is directly related to the degree novel observations depart from conventional belief. In this regard, let me mention a possible interpretation of reports discussing Eusapia’s capacity to free natural hands to perform PK. In one such report (Sidgwick, 1909:520), Ms. Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick “in charge of her [Eusapia’s] feet, and consequently lying on the floor holding them,” remarked: “As I looked up from that position, the ceiling made a light background, against which I saw silhouetted what looked exactly like Eusapia’s right arm and hand lifting a chair and placing it on the table. After the chair was on the table, I similarly saw against the ceiling Eusapia’s arm and Lady Stanley’s apparently holding each other by the hand . . . ”. Could these (and comparable) observations be interpreted to be regarding Eusapia’s anomalous limbs rather than her natural limbs? After all, in Bottazzi’s sessions, a few participants independently reported anomalous limbs emerging and retreating into Eusapia’s body (Bottazzi, 1909). Comparable observations had previously been reported (Carrington, 1909, de Rochas, 1906, Courtier, 1908, Dingwall, 1962, Lodge, 1894).

In conclusion, data from Bottazzi’s experiments indicate the following:

1) PK events were synchronous with Eusapia’s muscle contractions, their intensity being roughly proportional to the strength of contraction; 2) anomalous movements required to activate simple instruments and induce PK events had to be learned by Eusapia; 3) anomalous limbs responsible for PK movements were capable of tactile perceptions; 4) PK events did not occur beyond a certain distance from Eusapia;

5) anomalous limbs appeared to emerge out of Eusapia’s body; 6) synchronous movements made by Eusapia’s natural arm and anomalous limb were recorded.

On the basis of these observations, Bottazzi concluded that Eusapia was the main actor for the production of PK events. The latter occurred thanks to her capacity to temporarily express anomalous limbs endowed with sensory and motor functions similar to those of her natural arms, and governed by the same brain/mind controlling natural arms. In Bottazzi’s own words and capital letters:

Mediumistic phenomena which are not mere hallucinations of those participating in so-called spiritistic sessions, are biological phenomena depending on the MEDIUM’s organism. If so, they take place AS if being operated by extensions of natural limbs or by additional limbs stemming out from the MEDIUM’s body, returning and vanishing into it after variable time intervals, during which they reveal their existence by the sensations they elicit in us, like limbs differing from natural limbs in nothing essential. (Bottazzi, 1909:249)

This “biological” hypothesis significantly differed from the “spiritist” hypothesis, although the concurrent participation of “spiritual” entities (e.g., John King) was not excluded by Bottazzi. In his own words:

By no means can the spiritist hypothesis be refused and declared absurd, until it will be directly and definitely demonstrated that mediumistic phenomena are produced by a different well-determined mechanism. (Bottazzi, 1909:244)

In such an endeavor, as in his entire scientific career, Bottazzi was well aware of Leonardo’s conclusion: “Nature is filled with an infinite number of reasons that were never experienced.”

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to G. Hövelmann and M. Biondi for providing pertinent literature, and to M. Crispino for professional assistance in scanning figures from Bottazzi’s 1909 book. Special thanks to I. S., whose absence contributed to the preparation of the manuscript.

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