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Kilner-Walter: central claims

Source: Walter J. Kilner, The Human Atmosphere, or the Aura Made Visible by the Aid of Chemical Screens (Rebman, 1911), the project's only manifest document. After QE, the whole book is covered by deep reads except Chapter III (PDF pp.109-132, read by the Physicist and Mathematician); Chapters I-II, IV, V-VII and the Appendix were deep-read. Three Investigator files outside the manifest were also deep-read and are listed in facts.json: Kilner's 1920 second edition (his own later work), de Fontenay's 1912 review in Annales des Sciences Psychiques (a contemporary negative trial and a proposed blind test), and Boddington's c.1931 Aurospecs booklet (secondary; the author is the seller of the goggles). No source gap: the OCR text is readable throughout. Page tags are PDF pages (printed page = PDF page minus 19).

  1. A faint, structured haze (the "aura": Etheric Double, Inner Aura, Outer Aura) surrounds every human body and becomes visible to ordinary eyes after looking through a dicyanin ("spectauranine") screen [read: p.20-27, 40-41, 85-102]. In 1920 Kilner adds that 95 per cent of people with normal sight can see it [read: 1920 p.2 fn].
  2. The aura is a force from the body acting on the ether (two forces, 1 aF and 2 aF), lies outside the ordinary visible spectrum, and has counterparts in visible hazes around magnets, radio-active uranium and galvanic circuits [read: p.109-124]. In 1920 the hypothesis becomes "an ultra-violet phenomenon" with "a second and higher spectrum", and the aura is said to be changed by static electricity and by chemical fumes [read: 1920 p.v, 72-118].
  3. Aura size, shape, texture and colour reflect sex, age, heredity, temperament and disease: hysteria, epilepsy and hemiplegia each have a characteristic aura, and local disease, pain or pregnancy produce local changes (granularity, gaps, rays) [read: p.34-78, 166-249, 300-316]. The book's supporting counts are: parent-child width class agrees in 15 of 15 pairs, siblings in 9 of 13 pairs (Tables I-II combined); blue auras go with "the most mentally fit" (first 100 cases: 40 blue, 36 blue with grey, 17 grey, 7 not noted); and the Inner Aura was diminished on the left in "all ten" epileptics seen [read: p.70-84, 178-179, 247-249]. Kilner also reports epileptic readings made without a full history (Case 16 days before a fit, Case 17 with no questions asked but a friend's mention of "dreamy attacks") [read: p.183-194]. All classification was by Kilner, who knew the diagnoses in most cases.
  4. A negative afterimage ("complementary colour", C.C.) band cast on a patient turns lighter or darker over local disease, tenderness, impending menstruation, early pregnancy or a dead foetus (the last attributed by Kilner to aura texture in Case 40, not to the band, which "showed nothing unusual"), so it can be used for diagnosis [read: p.141-148, 250-325]. The clearest cases are readings that preceded the outcome, three of them against the patient's own expectation: Case 21 (told she was not pregnant and her period would not come within 4-5 days; it came 7 days later), a 38-year-old woman (told 6-7 days; she expected a fortnight; it came in 7 days), and a young woman (no pre-menstrual darkening; her period came a week late) [read: p.253-254, 317]. Others: Case 37 (light spot over crepitation found by stethoscope) and Case 33 (yellow spot at the most tender epigastric point; Dr Merrick saw the aura but not the spot) [read: p.276-278, 295-296]. Kilner himself reports that many painful spots show nothing and that the band shows no sign of hysteria or typical change in epilepsy [read: p.194, 266, 282].
  5. Changes in the C.C. band come, in cases texture does not explain, from the aura's colour, which the naked eye cannot see [read: p.156-159].
  6. The will can project rays from the Inner Aura and can change the aura's colour; in two trials with an unknown spot the observer located the willed spot with the blue C.C. band (one at the exact centre, one 0.5 in off), using one subject who could see auras herself [read: p.122-123, 326-338]. The 1920 edition adds that "some women have the power of changing the colours of their auras by voluntary effort (no man or boy has as yet been found to possess this faculty)"; the evidence is the one model, two hypnotised women and unspecified "several women" patients, with no count of men or boys tested [read: 1920 p.v, 78, 121-133].

Notes for later steps: - Claims 5 and 6 are tied together by Kilner's own footnote (p.156): the Appendix is his evidence for claim 5, and the Appendix experiments 5-6 test the location of a spot, not the identification of a colour [read: deep read]. - All evidence in the 1911 and 1920 books is one observer's reports; no blinding, second observer who confirmed a band patch, or count of failures is given. The nearest to a control are: Case 17 and the Merrick "test case" (history withheld); the 1920 microscope series (focus secretly displaced, series rejected if the re-match failed; 50 series kept, about one in three or four accepted); the unwitting methylene-blue substitutions; and one hypnosis trial (1920 Exp. 8) in which Dr Douglas induced the state without Kilner's knowledge. Independent observers: Dr Merrick (aura seen, band spot not); the unnamed mother and nurse of Case 1 (cloud seen "if they looked through the screen"); de Rochas and de Fontenay (1912, nothing seen, informal); O'Donnell (Chicago 1911, positive, relayed by newspaper, interested). - Case numbering: the OCR reads the digit 3 as 8 in case headings, so the extracted text shows "Case 88" and "Case 21" twice and "Cases 80-89". The book's own cases run 1-42; "Case 88" is two different cases, 33 (stomach ulcer) and 38 (asthma). Corrected numbers are in facts.json. (This replaces the earlier suggestion that the numbering continued oddly; it is an OCR error, not an oddity in the book.) Separate genuine inconsistencies in the book are listed in facts.json (Case 31 and pregnancy; p.246 "Case 30"). - The 1920 edition renumbers cases; the 1911 Appendix Case 42 is Case 25 in 1920, and 1920 Case 42 is a different (epileptic) woman. - The source mentions N-ray work (p.24, 122-123) that the Investigator and Physicist should trace. - Corrections to earlier role outputs, from the text: the young-woman menstrual case is a hit by Kilner's own rule (no pre-menstrual darkening, period late), not a miss, though no prediction is quoted as announced beforehand; Tables I-II are not the only counts in the book (see claim 3); the sibling count is 9 of 13 (9 of 16 with the X granddaughters), not 5 of 9.