2026-10-04 Wikipedia: "Walter John Kilner"

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_John_Kilner (reached from Google query "Walter J. Kilner" obituary 1920 BMJ "Human Aura"). A secondary source; used here for leads to primary records, which are listed for retrieval.

Biographical facts as Wikipedia gives them [web]: - Born 1847, Bury St Edmunds; son of John Kilner and Maria Garrett; King Edward VI School; St John's College, Cambridge. Medical electrician at St Thomas's Hospital, London, in charge of electrotherapy 1879-1893; private practice in Ladbroke Grove. MRCP 1883. Brother Charles Scott Kilner MBE of York House, Bury St Edmunds. One daughter, two sons. Died June 1920 "at his residence on the Isle of Wight", citing "Death of Dr. W. J. Kilner", Suffolk and Essex Free Press, 30 June 1920, p.6. - 1920 revised edition titled The Human Aura (Wikipedia's wording; the 1920 title page found on archive.org reads The Human Atmosphere (The Aura)). - "Francis J. Rebman, a friend of Kilner, supported his research in America", citing the Daily Journal-Gazette (Mattoon, Illinois), 19 August 1911, p.3; Rebman published a booklet The Human Aura: A Brief Explication of Dr. Kilner's Discovery ... (1912). The booklet is in full view on HathiTrust (hvd.hnxbgt; not read yet). - Oscar Bagnall (1937) later recommended pinacyanol in triethanolamine in place of dicyanin; Carl Edwin Lindgren (2005) suggested cobalt-blue glass. - Arthur E. Powell, The Etheric Double (1925), used Kilner's findings and noted that Kilner kept his work separate from clairvoyance.

Critical reception as Wikipedia reports it (kept; to be checked against the primary sources): - BMJ review, vol.1 no.2662 (6 January 1912), pp.21-22: Wikipedia says the reviewer judged that the evidence did not support a "purely physical phenomenon", ends with "Dr. Kilner has failed to convince us that his 'aura' is more real than Macbeth's visionary dagger", and that "Scientists from the BMJ attempted to replicate Kilner's experiments but the results were negative." The replication sentence needs checking against the review itself: Europe PMC lists it as "Reviews", Br Med J 1912, issue 2662, pp.20-22, PMC2344221, but the full text could not be opened this run (see europepmc note). Until it is read, the claim that the BMJ ran replications is Wikipedia's statement only. - J. Gordon Melton (2013): Kilner's results were seen by later researchers as artefacts of the observer's optic process; Kilner goggles were advertised in esoteric periodicals into the 1970s. - Joe Nickell (1993): calls the research pseudoscience, saying Kilner "uncritically accepted the validity of non-existent N-rays and clairvoyant powers". This is a sceptic author's characterisation.

Bears on: biography and record (priority 4); the BMJ review is the main mainstream rejection on record and must be read in full by a later run.