2026-10-04 HathiTrust Digital Library (babel.hathitrust.org)

Investigator run 1 (STEP I). Browsed in Chrome; full-text search, then page-by-page "text-only" view (cgi/ssd) read via in-page fetch because the page text tool returned nothing. Scripted access with curl got a Cloudflare "Just a moment" challenge, so nothing was downloaded from HathiTrust; the passages below were read in the browser.

Queries

• Full-text search: "Kilner" "dicyanin" (all fields, all items): 473 hits, 100+ full view. URL: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls?q1=%22Kilner%22%20%22dicyanin%22;anyall1=all;lmt=all;a=srchls;pn=1
• In-volume search: Kilner in Archives of the Roentgen Ray v.16 (1911/12), id uc1.d0010345536 (hits at printed pp. iv, vi, 122, 156, 199, 200, 240, 344).
• Text-only pages of Feerhow 1913 (njp.32101063849507), seq 2-60.

Hits on page 1 of the full-text search (not all opened)

A. Archives of the Roentgen Ray, v.16 (1911-12), London: Rebman

Interested party: the journal was published by Rebman, the same house that published Kilner's book and sold the screens with it (catalogue in the project PDF). Its editor was W. Deane Butcher [web: masthead, seq 215]. Its review and editorial are therefore the publisher's own journal speaking, not a neutral review.

A1. Kilner's own paper (priority 1): "The Shifting of the Chromatic Focus of the Eye by the Use of a Dicyanin Screen", by Walter J. Kilner, M.B., M.R.C.P., pp. 344-346, 351-352 (seq 360-362, 367-368; plates intervene). Issue month not recorded.

[web: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.d0010345536&seq=360]

What it reports: - Origin: Kilner found he did not need to rack out opera-glasses as far for an object 4 ft away as he had needed for 8 ft before using dicyanin. A medical friend told him of a man who needed no reading spectacles for 24 hours after viewing the aura through the screen. - Method: microscope with fine adjustment of 1/100 in per turn, 10 divisions per turn, so one division = 1/1000 in (Kilner's unit "m"). Lowest eyepiece, 1/4-in [OCR "14-inch"] objective, a blowfly proboscis bristle as target. Focus repeatedly with the coarse adjustment (to rule out accommodation), then put yellow, red, blue and violet filters (violet = gentian violet, which he calls unreliable because it has two transmission bands, citing Mees' Atlas of Absorption Spectra) under the object and refocus with the fine adjustment. Then look at a bright light through the dark dicyanin screen for about a minute and repeat. - Worked example, observer A: before dicyanin, white 0, yellow 0, red -1 m, blue +1 m, violet +3 m. After dicyanin, white +2.5 m; yellow +1, red +1, blue +2, violet +3. Taking white-after as zero gives red -2, yellow -1.5, blue -1, violet +0.5 m. - Table: 12 observers "taken consecutively from thirty cases"; 10 medical men, 2 used to microscopes. Observers I, J and K (over 60) responded less, which he offers as the reason people over 50 see the aura with more difficulty. Observer L, a clairvoyant, showed the largest shift (white +6.5 m after dicyanin) and said she saw better without her glasses than she had for years. - Interpretation (Kilner's): the eye's "chromatic focus" moves from yellow (Fraunhofer D, about 590 "Au." i.e. nm) toward indigo/violet, making the observer temporarily more myopic. He "personally believe[s]" the visible range shifts with it, out to "lavender grey" (he gives M at about 370 nm), so the observer can see the aura and the magnet haze, and that the nearer a person's focus comes to violet, the more apt he is to see the aura. He proposes the short test (white, blue/violet filter, white after dicyanin) as a screening test for aura-seeing ability. - Mechanism: he finds no effect on accommodation, dismisses a change in lens refractive index as "so improbable", and proposes the effect acts on rhodopsin and, for its persistence, on the cells that secrete it. He says he could devise no experiment to tell which part of the eye is affected. - Bears on: claim 1 (screen makes aura visible), claim 2 (aura beyond the visible spectrum); it is the only quantitative, multi-observer measurement by Kilner found so far, and it gives a testable physical claim (a refocus shift of a few thousandths of an inch after dicyanin) that the 1911 book does not have. It is a candidate for the Physicist's and Mathematician's worked check (chromatic aberration of the eye, depth of focus of a microscope at that magnification versus a 0.001-0.0065 in shift).

A2. Unsigned review of The Human Atmosphere, p.156 (seq 170) (priority 2, interested party)

[web: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ssd?id=uc1.d0010345536;seq=170] - Price: 30s. net with screens in a box and a book of 36 perforated diagnosis charts; book 15s., screens 17s. 6d., charts 1s. - Characterisation: calls the book "a serious and scientific attempt"; Kilner "a keen and accurate observer"; "no trace of spiritualism, occultism". - Witness statement: "Dr. Kilner has demonstrated his method of viewing the human aura to a number of medical men, and there seems to be no doubt that many of them are able to see a bluish haze surrounding the human body when suitably illuminated." No names, numbers or dates. - Caution in the same review: in "slight impressions it is difficult to distinguish between impressions made on the retina and those made on the visual centre ... between sight and suggestion". - Congratulates Kilner on replacing the trade name "spectauranine" with the chemical name dicyanin, so the method is not "burdened by the use of a secret preparation" (bears on the facts.json note that the dye was named only in a footnote). - Declines to assess the disease and complementary-colour band claims (claims 3-5): "If succeeding investigators should confirm his results ...".

A3. Editorial passage, p.122 (seq 136) (editor's view; interested party)

• Says all bodies warmer and moister than their surroundings must have an atmosphere, but that the aura is thought "electrical, and perhaps radio-active", with streamers from finger-tips and elbows "as they would if due to a simple discharge of electrons".
• Repeats the dicyanin myopia claim: dicyanin produces "a sort of artificial or temporary myopia", with the opera-glass (8 ft vs 4 ft) and 24-hour spectacles anecdotes.

A4. Letter from "H. C. S.", Correspondence, pp.199-200 (seq 213-214) (priority 2: an independent trial, mixed)

[web: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ssd?id=uc1.d0010345536;seq=213] - Writer thanks the editor for a reply about Kilner's work; "Dr. Goodspeed and I have succeeded in producing some of the effects under some special arrangements of our own; but we find that the phenomenon is not easy to see, and not everyone is able to perceive it." - "Up to date there is no doubt but that a physical phenomenon is observable; but it is extremely questionable indeed as to whether or not there can be any connection between the physical phenomenon and the human entity. For myself, I find the phenomenon is more pronounced with an inanimate hand-towel than it is with the human being." - Identity: "Dr. Goodspeed" is probably Arthur W. Goodspeed, physicist at the University of Pennsylvania and early X-ray worker [memory, medium confidence; NOT verified this run]. "H. C. S." is unidentified. Next run: trace both (UPenn archives, Goodspeed papers). - Bears on claim 1 (something visible) and against the human-specific part of claims 1-2 (the haze around an inanimate towel was stronger). Both parts are kept.

A5. Kilner's reply, Correspondence, p.240 (seq 254) (priority 1)

• Kilner: "I have never seen a haze around any inanimate object, except a magnet or a radio-active substance." He has never known anyone who could with the screens, though told some clairvoyants can. "If your correspondent has imperfect sight, very likely the use of the screens will exaggerate it."

B. Friedrich Feerhow, Die menschliche Aura und ihre experimentelle Erforschung. Ein neuer Beitrag zum Problem der Radioaktivität des Menschen, Leipzig: Max Altmann, 1913 (6 figures)

[web: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101063849507] Contents (p.5): I. Kilner's predecessors and contemporary aura researchers (p.1); II. Dr. Kilner's experiments (p.13); III. Re-examination of the phenomenon by other experimenters (p.33); IV. The aura as object of the "clairvoyant" (p.40); V. Appendix: spectauranine experiments from the minutes of the Vienna "Psychological Society" (p.60).

Chapter III read (seq 39-45, pp.33-39): - G. W. Surya (Graz), editor of Zentralblatt für Okkultismus (also an Altmann publication: interested party, as Feerhow notes in the footnote), began Kilner-screen trials in German-speaking lands and published reports in the February 1912 issue. - Surya's estimate: "about 50%" of subjects see nothing on first use of the screens; he lists causes (eyes, lack of "sensitivity" in Reichenbach's sense, untrained eye, wrong lighting, weak aura of the subject). He calls for photography of the aura, or screens working for about 95% of subjects, before chance and self-deception can be ruled out. - Surya's trials: (1) a woman of about 20 who had attended seances; dark-blue screen 1.5 min at the window, then pale-blue screen at Surya 2.5 m away in a darkened part of the room; she saw a white or yellow mist round his head after about a minute, later over his upper body; then through the pink screen; stopped when she felt pressure at the heart and "everything went black". (2) A married woman of 28, described as not knowing what she was supposed to see and not knowing Reichenbach; evening, 16-candle metal-filament lamp, then dimmed, then dark room; saw a luminous haze round head and shoulders, bundles of rays about 20 cm from both ears (left weaker; Surya says he does hear worse on that ear), a band between his fingertips held 2-3 cm apart, and finally the aura with the naked eye. Surya recommends using only observers who know nothing of Od or aura, to exclude autosuggestion; the trials were not blinded in any other way that is described. - Footnote: a report of failed Kilner experiments by de Rochas and de Fontenay in Annales des Sciences psychiques, March 1912 (see IAPSOP note). - Feerhow links the results to "N-rays" from the head during mental work (his own earlier book N-Strahlen und Od) and to Leadbeater's thought-forms; he says Surya's last trial confirms a claim of Dr. Luys. - Not read this run: Chapter II (Feerhow's account of Kilner, may summarise Kilner's later papers) and the Appendix (Vienna Psychological Society minutes): next run.

Bears on: claim 1 (independent observers in Graz report seeing a haze; one reports the naked-eye effect Kilner describes); claim 6 (Feerhow and Surya read later reports as aura change by thought); priority 3 (Reichenbach "Od", N-rays, Luys).