2026-10-04 Google Search (via Chrome), plus NYT and Encyclopedia.com visits
Queries and results
"Walter J. Kilner" obituary 1920 BMJ "Human Aura": Wikipedia and Grokipedia. Led to the Wikipedia note."Kilner" "Human Atmosphere" 1912 British Medical Journal "Macbeth's" OR "Lancet" aura review: archive.org, Wellcome Collection catalogue (a copy from the Countway Library, Harvard), Google Books 1920 edition (University of Chicago copy), theesotericcanon.com essay dated 15 Sep 2026 (secondary; not opened), and The New York Times, 5 Feb 1911: "The human aura has at last been photographed: Dr. W.J. Kilner of London succeeded in catching ..." (https://www.nytimes.com/1911/02/05/archives/the-human-aura-has-at-last-been-photographed-dr-wj-kilner-of-london.html).dicyanin dye absorption spectrum history "Meister Lucius" OR Hoechst Kilner screen: social-media posts only. Repeated (unsourced) statements say the dye came from Meister, Lucius & Brüning at Höchst. A Scribd document ("The Human Aura: A Study of Beliefs", 1970) has the snippet that the "supply of dicyanin produced by the German chemists Meister Lucius and Breuning was cut off during the 1914-18 war". That is secondary and its source is not yet seen; it agrees with Boddington 1931 (see archive.org note)."Kilner" aura "Annales des sciences psychiques" 1912 Rochas Fontenay écrans: IAPSOP 1912 volume (see IAPSOP note); MIT Press bibliography (J. Stolow) citing de Fontenay, "L'aura humaine et les écrans du Dr Walter J. Kilner", ASP 22 no.3 (1912): 74-84; Charles Richet, Thirty Years of Psychical Research, which cites Kilner and "Dr. O'Donnell"; Georg Editeur PDF (French book on mediums and cinema, p.86 on Kilner); Luce e Ombra 1912 (archive.org LeO1912) listing the de Fontenay article."O'Donnell" Kilner screens aura Chicago Mercy Hospital dicyanin 1930s: Encyclopedia.com "Aura" (from the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology). Snippet: "Dr. O'Donnell of the Chicago Mercy Hospital controlled and confirmed Dr. Kilner's experiments; they were, according to a note by psychic researcher Harry Price ...". The Encyclopedia.com page then returned 404 in Chrome, so the full entry and the Harry Price note were not read.
NYT 5 Feb 1911: partial
The archive page rendered blank in Chrome (no text, blank screenshot), so only the headline from the search result is recorded. It is notable because it predates the book's copyright year and says the aura had been "photographed", whereas the 1911 book reports that photography failed and the 1920 preface says it had been photographed only "to a slight extent". Next run: TimesMachine or a newspaper archive for the full article.
Bears on
Claim 1 (O'Donnell's Chicago demonstration: two independent mentions, the 1912 Annales citing the New York Herald, and the Encyclopedia entry citing Harry Price) and the historical record (newspaper coverage in 1911, wartime loss of the dye).