2026-10-04 IAPSOP (iapsop.com), International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals

Found through the Google query "Kilner" aura "Annales des sciences psychiques" 1912 Rochas Fontenay écrans. Downloaded the whole 1912 volume (400 PDF pages, 48 MB) to research/files/annales-des-sciences-psychiques-v22-1912.pdf. Source: http://iapsop.com/archive/materials/annales_des_sciences_psychiques/annales_des_sciences_psychiques_v22_1912.pdf

The OCR is letter-spaced and in two columns; the passages below were read from the text layer after joining letters. A later step should render PDF pp.80-92 as images for exact wording. Page tags are PDF pages.

PDF pages that mention Kilner: 80, 82, 86, 87, 88, 90, 189, 196.

Guillaume de Fontenay, "L'aura humaine et les écrans du Dr Walter J. Kilner", Annales des Sciences Psychiques 22 no.3 (March 1912), pp.74-84 (PDF pp.80-90)

Sections: I. The article by Comte de Rochas. II. The aura. III. Dr Kilner's technique; our trials. IV. What Dr Kilner and his pupils see. V. Proposed verifications.

Historical record (priority 4) [web, PDF p.80]: - 19 May 1911: the London correspondent of a Chicago newspaper ("Journal de Chicago") reported Kilner's discovery; the note appeared on 21 June. - The New York Herald of 15 June 1911 announced that Kilner's experiments had been repeated at Mercy Hospital (Chicago) by Dr Patrice (Patrick) S. O'Donnell before about twenty physicians of the hospital, and that they had succeeded. - Comte (Albert) de Rochas published and commented on both American articles in Annales des Sciences Psychiques, 1 September 1911, pp.264-268 (vol. 21; not yet obtained). - Two months later M. (César) de Vesme obtained Kilner's book and a box of the four screens and lent them to de Rochas, de Fontenay and others. De Fontenay notes that the screens contained a substance "whose nature was kept secret".

Negative trials (priority 2, evidence against; kept in full) [web, PDF p.86-88]: - De Fontenay: "I am forced to recognise that we have not been able to obtain with Dr Kilner's screens the results that this author's book led us to hope for." - De Rochas tried them first and saw nothing, nor did the non-seeing persons he tested; but one of his "seeing" (clairvoyant) subjects said she saw the aura better with the screen than with the naked eye. - De Fontenay saw nothing that matched Kilner's descriptions; nor did friends who took turns as observers and subjects. Dr Jean-Charles Roux, to whom he passed the screens, had not been "much more fortunate". - His own reading: a failure "can imply at most a simple reservation and not at all a denial"; a book replaces the inventor's oral instruction only imperfectly. He also cites O'Donnell's demonstration to about twenty physicians as a reason not to call Kilner's phenomena illusory. - Section II separates an "aura of radiation" (heat, measurable with a thermometer or bolometer) and an "aura of emanation" (water vapour, measurable with a hygrometer) from the psychic aura. He says the first two are normally invisible but "it is not impossible" eyes see them under some conditions. This is a candidate ordinary-physics explanation for claim 1 raised in 1912 by a sympathetic investigator, and the Physicist should weigh it (refractive-index gradient of warm, moist air next to skin, i.e. schlieren). - Section IV asks whether Kilner sees a physical aura or "an aura of another order"; Section V proposes verifications. Neither section was read in full this run: next run, from page images.

Other 1912 items in the same volume

• PDF p.196: the annual report of the Paris section of a psychical society lists a lecture by de Rochas and de Fontenay "on Dr Kilner's screens, intended to make the aura of the human body perceptible" [web].
• PDF p.189: a review notes R. Werner's report that normal human tissues show a weak, uncertain "photo-activity" (fogging of photographic plates), confirmed by Caan of Heidelberg, especially for the brain; the reviewer adds that for Kilner's aura on the living body special photographic screens would be needed [web]. Related work (priority 3), bearing on claim 2 (radioactivity analogy) and the photographs Kilner promises in his 1920 preface.

Bears on

• Claim 1: one documented 1911 group demonstration said to have succeeded (O'Donnell, Chicago, about twenty physicians; reported second-hand through a newspaper) and one documented group trial that failed (de Rochas, de Fontenay, Roux, Paris, 1911-12), with one clairvoyant subject reporting improvement.
• Records to obtain: New York Herald 15 June 1911; Chicago newspaper of 21 June 1911; Annales 1 Sept 1911 pp.264-268; any record of O'Donnell at Mercy Hospital.