The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [182]
121: “theories on which to build”: Myers’s list of theories in ibid., xxxii-xxxiii.
121: “ploughing through some strange ocean”: Ibid., xxxv—xxxvi.
122: Powdered nutmeg: Results from Gurney’s taste testing, ibid., 46-49.
125: “The question for us now”: ... and discussion of census: Ibid., 376—89.
127: “a bit of land”: WJ to his wife, Nov. 11, 1886, Houghton.
127: “mind-cure doctress”: James’s doctress and his stand against Massachusetts legislation to eliminate alternative healers are discussed in the introduction to Murphy and Ballou, William James and Psychical Research, 8-12.
127: the bane of the American Medical Association: The early AMA position and Mark Twain’s response are described in Patrick K. Ober, M.D., “Mark Twain’s Criticism of Medicine in the United States,” Annals of Internal Medicine 126, no. 2 (Jan. 15, 1997): 157-63.
129: “This is a most extraordinary work”: William James, “Review of Phantasms of the Living, by Edmund Gurney et al.,” Science 9 (Jan. 7, 1887): 18-20.
129: research community had taken notice: Scientific response to Phantasms, with an emphasis on the “tone of superior wisdom” taken by Charles Peirce, in Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 171—74.
6. All Ye Who Enter Here
131: “der bestirnte Himmel”: Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, reprinted, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.
131: “Sidgwick ... as a young philosopher”: For the context for Sidgwick’s place in philosophy, see Barton Schultz, “Henry Sidgwick,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (winter 2004 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2004/entries/sidgwick/.
132: “a Sovereign will”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 373-74.
133: “He combines the powers”: Gurney to WJ, Jan. 16, 1887, Houghton.
134: “Well, I am happy enough”: Hodgson to Hackett, July 18, 1887, and Nov. 14, 1887, ASPR.
135: “My cousin Fred”: Hodgson, “A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance,” Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research 8 (1892): 60-67.
136: “a dissipated looking wreck”: Joseph Rinn, Sixty Years of Psychical Research (New York: Truth Seeker, 1960), 76.
136: a new scientific commission: The Report of the Seybert Commission on Spiritualism (J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1920), 32-45.
137: rare united reaction: The spiritualist response is described in Funk, Widow’s Mite, 81-83, 117-19.
138: “Professor James and his ilk”: James to the editor of the Banner of Light, Feb. 10, 1887; Banner printed his letter and the editors’ response in the same issue.
138 : “the acumen of Hodgson”: Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 465.
139: Alice and Mary were caught signaling: The Creery sisters’ cheating is described in Hall, Strange Case of Edmund Gurney, 55—61; Oppenheim, Other World, 359-60.
140: “If only I could form the least conception”: Sidgwick, Mar. 30, 1887, cited in Sidgwick and Sidgwick, Henry Sidgwick, 374.
141: “In one sense, I am sacrificing myself”: Hodgson to Hackett, Jan. 29, 1888, ASPR.
142: It took all James’s diplomatic skills: James as diplomat, in Piper, Life and Work, 43-45.
142: “You idiot!”: Piper, Life and Work, 62; Hodgson’s other precautions are described on pp. 62—65.
143: “It is a mercy that Hodgson exists”: Gurney to WJ, May 20, 1888, Houghton.
144: Gurney’s death: Obituary in the Atheneum, June 30, 1888, 827; account of inquest in Hall, Strange Case of Edmund Gurney, based on accounts from the Sussex Daily News, Brighton Examiner, Brighton Gazette, Brighton and Hove Herald, June 26, 1888; and Epperson, Mind of Edmund Gurney, 137-53. Three books also discuss Gurney’s suicide, with Hall raising the possibility that he was demoralized by cheating in the SPR’s telepathy experiments. Epperson contradicts this point of view emphatically, as does Gauld, Founders of Psychical Research, 173-82; both of these authors prefer the idea of either accident or a suicide related to his manic-depressive personality.
144: “It seems one of Death’s stupidest strokes”: WJ to Henry James; cited in Sheppard, Henry James, 122.