Kilner-Walter · Source catalogue

Kilner, a London hospital electrician-physician, reports that by looking at daylight through a glass cell of 'spectauranine' (a footnote names it dicyanin, in alcohol) a person can see a faint haze, the 'Human Atmosphere' or aura, around the body [read: p.24-25]. He divides it into an Etheric Double (a narrow dark band, about 1/8 to 3/16 inch next to the skin), an Inner Aura (about 2-4 inches, striated, with rays) and an Outer Aura (structureless cloud, a few inches to 12 inches wide), plus a supposed 'Ultra-Outer Aura' [read: p.40-41, 85-102]. He tabulates width and shape in about 40 numbered cases (infants to age 58), with figures, and claims: sex and age differences (female aura widens at puberty), heredity and temperament links (blue aura = more intelligent, grey = duller), and characteristic shapes in hysteria ('spatulate', lumbar bulge), epilepsy (one side narrowed, usually left), hemiplegia and pregnancy [read: p.34-78, 166-190, 230-249, 300-303]. He offers a physical theory: the aura is a 'force emanating from the body' made visible by its action on the ether, comparable to haze he says he saw around magnets, a radio-active uranium nitrate crystal and galvanic cells (pp.110-121). He posits two forces, 1 aF (Inner Aura, partly under the will) and 2 aF (Outer Aura, independent of the will) [read: p.121-124]. He proposes the aura lies outside the ordinary visible spectrum, and that dicyanin works on the eye's visual purple (rhodopsin) or by a lasting constitutional change in the observer's eye [read: p.109-110, 127-133]. He cites Reichenbach's 'sensitives' and clairvoyants as support [read: p.128-130, 156]. His diagnostic method (Chapter IV, VI) is the 'complementary colour (C.C.) band': the observer stares 30-60 s at a coloured paper strip, then looks at the patient, and the negative afterimage band across and beyond the body is judged lighter or darker in patches. Kilner says patches mark local disease, pain or tenderness, impending menstruation, early pregnancy, a dead foetus and so on [read: p.141-148, 250-325]. He lists four possible causes of a changed band (skin, aura thickness, aura texture, aura colour) and adopts 'colour of the aura' as a working hypothesis for the cases the others do not explain. The observer's own visual system is not on his list, although he himself notes that eye movement, fading and fatigue alter afterimages [read: p.133-134, 139-140, 144, 149-150]. He says the complementary colours 'are entirely subjective' [read: p.140]. The Appendix (Cases 41, 42) reports willing experiments. Subject 'G.2' (Case 41) willed rays at chosen body sites, which Kilner reports as brightening and extending the Inner Aura. Subject 'D.' (Case 42), a paid artist's model who could see the aura herself, willed colours: red, blue, yellow areas (Exp. 1-3), then a small red spot on the right breast/sternum (Exp. 4, site and colour known to observer), a red spot somewhere on the abdomen (Exp. 5, site hidden from the observer; he reports a darker blue-band spot at 'the exact centre'), and a yellow spot on the thorax (Exp. 6, site hidden; he reports a dark patch with the finger half an inch off centre) [read: p.326-338]. Kilner presents these as proving that colour changes in the C.C. band reflect aura colour. The body also contains observations of will-produced and hand-to-hand rays, magnet, uranium and galvanic 'clouds', a pocket-spectroscope check of the screens, failed attempts to photograph the aura (panchromatic, ultrared, ultraviolet), and earlier N-ray needle-deflection work that he abandoned [read: p.109, 113-123]. All observations are by the author, one observer, with no counts of successes and failures. Kilner calls some of his deductions working hypotheses resting on small case numbers and says enthusiasm and imagination can mislead [read: p.10-11]. PDF pp.1-5 are Google front matter; pp.339-349 index; pp.350-357 publisher catalogue; pp.358-361 library back matter. QE-round additions (deep reads of Ch. I-II and Ch. V-VII). CASE NUMBERS: the OCR renders the digit 3 as 8 in case headings, so the extracted text shows duplicate and odd numbers. Corrected [read: page images]: OCR 'Case 18' (I.N., PDF p.169) is Case 13; OCR 'Case 28' (E.E., breast tumour, PDF p.208) is Case 23; OCR 'Case 80' (58-year-old woman, odd shape, Fig. 24) is Case 30; OCR 'Cases 81, 82, 88, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89' are Cases 31, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39 ('Case 88' appears twice because it is two different cases, 33 stomach ulcer and 38 asthma); OCR 'Case 85' is Case 35. The book's own sequence runs 1-42. These are OCR errors, not a duplicated numbering in the book. Case 30 is a stout non-pregnant woman of 58 whose abdomen made her look six months pregnant; Kilner says 'We are unable to explain this remarkable Aura' [read: p.235-238]. Digest 03 calls her pregnant and one earlier deep-read citation 'Fig. 21' should be Fig. 24. PROTOCOL [read: p.24-32, 86-87, 109]: light 'must not be too bright', 'determined at each observation', no illumination figure anywhere; observer's back to a darkened window, patient facing it, about one foot in front of a black background that sits about eight feet from the window; no observer-to-patient distance, window size or time of day; dark-screen preparation 30 s to 1 min. Kilner states that the aura 'has been searched for constantly in the dark without the slightest sign' [read: p.109]. OTHER OBSERVERS [read: p.41, 25, 127, 129-130]: the only named non-Kilner witnesses in Ch. I-II are the infant's (Case 1, aged 15 hours) unnamed mother and nurse, who 'were able to see the cloud around him, if they looked through the screen' (no description from them is given); a single unnamed friend at the first sighting; one unnamed clairvoyant consulted about eyesight. Chapter III says that if people look through a dark screen first 'all will be able to see it - some immediately and the rest within a minute', with three groups of observers and no counts, names or blinding. Later chapters add Dr Merrick (saw the aura but not the C.C. spot in Case 33) and lay witnesses: the mother of Case 26 who noticed an aura gap, the mother of Case 34, the father of Case 17. ETHERIC DOUBLE Exps 1-7 [read: p.88-89]: written as recipes (blue, white-background, green, yellow, dark-red and carmine screens); no data, number of subjects, trials or second observer. Kilner admits the rose tint of the Etheric Double on carmine against white has 'as yet no explanation... unless it is self-luminous' [read: p.94-95]. HEREDITY TABLES I-II [read: p.70-84; page images p.80, 81]: width classes (wide/average/narrow; women 'average' 8-10 in, men 3.5-4.5 in, children 2.5-3 in) were fixed 'by experience only, and not by any scientific plan'; no statement that the classifier was blind to relationship. Table I: 30 persons, 13 families; 15 parent-child pairs all concordant, plus the X family's granddaughters (F.X. narrow, G.X. average, E.X. wide; 0 of 3 agree with the grandfather's/aunt's class). Table II: 18 persons, 9 sibling pairs, 5 identical, 4 differ by one step. Sibling count is incomplete if Table II alone is used: Table I itself contains sibling sets X.X./B.X./C (all narrow; 3 pairs agree) and K.M./M.M. (both average; 1 pair), so siblings agree 9 of 13 pairs; adding the X granddaughters gives 9 of 16 [read: p.80-81; calc, QE and reproduced]. With the chance rate 0.383 used by the Primer, P(9 or more of 13) is about 0.024; one-sided Fisher exact test of 15/15 against 9/13 gives p about 0.035, against 9/16 about 0.004 [calc]. The Table I siblings are not independent of their parents (if each child matches the parent, the children match each other), so both readings are reported. Tables I and II are not 'the one place in the book with counts' (see colour series below). COLOUR SERIES, 'the first hundred cases inspected' [read: p.247-249]: blue 40 ('no individual below... the average in mental power'); blue with more or less grey 36 (1 hemiplegia, 2 epileptics, 1 meningitis); grey 17 (2 eccentric, 6 epileptics, 1 general paralysis, 3 mentally dull); no colour noted 7. Kilner calls this 'conclusive' that blue-aura owners are 'the most mentally fit'; he says the proportion of healthy people was larger than in his later inspections. No criterion for 'mental power' is given and the classifier knew the diagnoses (epileptics etc.). All 8 epileptics fall in the two grey-containing series (0 of 40 blue). The 1920 edition reprints it 'unaltered' but its OCR lists only 93 cases [read: 1920 p.245]. EPILEPSY [read: p.178-179, 194, 302]: 'In all the cases (ten in number) we have seen the diminution has been on the left side', 4 males and 6 females aged 12 to 45; only 3 are individually described (Cases 15, 16, 17); the other seven are not described. Kilner asked friends which side convulsed more: all but one were 'too upset to notice', the exception (a mother) said the right side, and the one fit Kilner saw showed no difference [read: p.302]. He also reports himself that 'In none of the cases has the C.C. band showed any change that can be typical of the complaint' [read: p.194]. READINGS MADE WITH LIMITED OR NO PRIOR HISTORY, AND PREDICTIONS (Ch. V-VII; corrected case numbers; Kilner is the only observer and usually the treating physician; he states that normally 'the history of the patient be known' first [read: p.251]): - Case 16 (girl 18): history of faints taken; 'Her Aura was found to be typically epileptic... The diagnosis made at the time was, that she was an epileptic'; 'A few days later this was confirmed as she had a fit during tea at a friend's house' (Nov 1908). Whether Kilner knew her family history (brother Case 15 epileptic, father Case 18) is not stated; who confirmed the fit is not stated [read: p.183-188]. - Case 17 (boy 13, Jan 1910): 'purposely no questions were asked before inspection', but a friend had told Kilner of 'dreamy attacks'. Reading: 'distinctly epileptic'. His father later said the boy was under treatment for 'Petit Mal' [read: p.188-194]. - Case 18 (bootmaker 58): 'said never to have had a fit'; Kilner 'considered him to be epileptic, even before we could perceive the Aura' and 'still hold to that opinion', concluding 'masked epilepsy'; no outcome, and Kilner himself calls it 'the above very doubtful case' [read: p.194-195]. - Case 21 (lady 34): believed herself pregnant (two periods missed). Kilner read no pregnancy sign (no band discoloration above the pubes, dark lumbo-sacral patch) and said 'pregnancy was out of the question, that menstruation would not take place within four or five days, but when, could not be foretold'; it 'occurred just seven days after the inspection' [read: p.317]. Against her belief; the prediction was partly open-ended; confirmation source not stated. - 38-year-old woman: band showed 'incipient darkening... just above the pubes'; told to expect her period in six or seven days she replied it was not due for a fortnight; Kilner 'noted down as mistaken prognosis'; two months later she volunteered that it had come 'seven days afterwards, being a week before the proper time'. Against her expectation; confirmed only by her own later recollection [read: p.253-254]. - Young woman who expected her period 'in three or four days': 'no change in the C.C. band above the pubes'; 'her period was a week later than the right date'. Read by Kilner's rule (p.252) as the band correctly showing that the period was not imminent; against her expectation, but no prediction is quoted as announced before the outcome and who confirmed the date is not stated [read: p.254]. (The earlier Arbiter and Primer scored this as a miss; the text supports a hit by Kilner's own rule, with the limit just stated.) - Case 34 (woman 26, hysterical): C.C. band showed a light patch at the 7th cervical spine; she said she had no pain there; her mother said 'Why, that is where you are always complaining of pain!' The patient replied she was free from pain at that time 'and thought that was what was wanted' [read: p.285]. Same case: tenderness greater on the right groin where the band showed nothing, 'a question impossible to solve at present'. - Case 33 (Dr Merrick's ulcer patient): diagnosis known, site not asked; a yellow spot below the ensiform cartilage coincided with the most tender spot; Dr Merrick saw the aura 'quite plainly' but not the spot [read: p.276-278]. - Merrick 'test case' (woman 29): history deliberately not taken; a lighter patch led to 'only a slight ailment', 'turned out to be correct' (confirmer implied to be Merrick, not stated). The only case Kilner frames as a test [read: p.272-273]. - Case 37 (woman 43): haemoptysis, no organic cause found on a careful first examination; two days later 'A light spot, about the size of a florin' was 'immediately seen' in the left second intercostal space; the stethoscope there found 'fine crepitation'. Confirmed by Kilner's own auscultation; he adds 'we do not think we should have missed this inflamed patch' anyway [read: p.295-296]. - Lady with the malignant right breast: back pain site not stated; light spot over the left scapula where 'the pain existed'; prognosis that pain would not last; it disappeared in a few days. The breast malignancy was found by other means, and Kilner makes no aura claim about it [read: p.280]. - Case 39 (woman 29): 'no doubt' of pregnancy; no outcome reported. Case 40 (Mrs T., 30): 'a diagnosis of a dead child was justified', on granular Inner Aura texture; the C.C. band 'showed nothing unusual' [read: p.321-322]; uterus soft, no heart sounds, and she 'was delivered of a dead male infant' two months later. The history (no foetal movement for three weeks) already pointed to foetal death and the patient feared it. KILNER'S OWN REPORTED FAILURES AND NULLS [read: p.194, 266, 282, 284-286, 295-298, 309]: epilepsy shows no typical C.C. change; 'A fair proportion' of painful spots are invisible in the band; the band 'sometimes gives rise to no change whatever, when a predication of a marked alteration would seemingly be a certainty'; the C.C. band 'does not show any diagnostic mark of hysteria'; chest disease: 'the limitations of the Aura as a diagnostic agent are great'; granular kidney (2-3 cases) showed no aura change. Unresolved internal discrepancies in the book: p.246 'Case 30' described in terms that fit Case 40; p.313 calls Case 31 (nervous vomiting) 'due to pregnancy'; the shade of Case 31's spinal strip is 'lighter' on p.259 and p.308, 'dark' on p.266.

Key claims

• Looking at daylight through a dicyanin ('spectauranine') alcohol screen lets an ordinary observer see a faint haze, the aura, around every human body, and repeated use leaves the observer able to see it without the screen for a time [read: p.20-27, 131-133].
• The aura has three parts (Etheric Double, Inner Aura of about 2-4 in with striae, Outer Aura of several inches) and an exceedingly faint Ultra-Outer Aura [read: p.40-41, 85-102].
• The aura is a force emanating from the body, made visible by its action on the ether, and is generated by two distinct forces (1 aF for the Inner, 2 aF for the Outer) [read: p.112, 121-124].
• Similar hazes are visible around a magnet, a radio-active uranium nitrate crystal and galvanic cell conductors, are bluish or yellowish, and attract and interpenetrate one another [read: p.112-119].
• The aura's vibrations lie outside the ordinary visible spectrum, which is why clairvoyants and screen-prepared eyes can see it and others cannot [read: p.109-110, 128-133].
• The width and shape of the aura vary with sex, age (the female aura changes from the masculine to the adult type over 4-6 years from age 12-13), heredity and temperament; a blue aura goes with higher mental power and a grey one with dullness [read: p.34-78, 246-249].
• Hysteria, epilepsy and hemiplegia each give a characteristic aura shape (wide trunk and lumbar bulge in hysteria; narrowing of one side, usually the left, in epilepsy) [read: p.166-190, 300-303].
• Disease changes the Inner Aura's texture (striated to fine, medium or coarse granular) and can open gaps in it, and these changes can be seen with a dark carmine screen [read: p.152-163, 238-246].
• A complementary-colour afterimage band projected on a patient becomes lighter or darker over local disease, pain, tenderness, menstrual approach, early pregnancy or a dead foetus, because of aura texture or colour changes [read: p.145-148, 250-325].
• In early pregnancy the aura is wider in front of the lower abdomen and breasts and is never granular, so a dark lumbo-sacral patch in the C.C. band argues against pregnancy [read: p.311-316].
• Will power can project rays from the Inner Aura, more easily at body prominences such as the nose tip and nipple [read: p.122-123, 326-330].
• A subject can will the aura to take a colour, and the resulting colour change is detectable through the C.C. band even where invisible to the naked eye; in two trials the observer, not told the site, found the willed spot (one at 'the exact centre', one about 0.5 in off) [read: p.330-338].
• Heredity: the aura's width class (wide, average or narrow) of 15 of 15 parent-child pairs in Table I agrees, and siblings agree in 9 of 13 pairs (Table I and II sibling sets combined; 9 of 16 if the X granddaughters are added), classes having been fixed 'by experience only' [read: p.78-81; calc].
• Of Kilner's first 100 cases, 40 had blue auras with no individual below average mental power, 36 had blue with some grey and 17 had grey auras including 6 epileptics and 3 mentally dull; the other 7 were not recorded [read: p.247-249].
• In all ten epileptics seen the Inner Aura was diminished on the left side (4 males, 6 females, aged 12-45) [read: p.178-179].
• Kilner read an epileptic aura in a girl of 18 (Case 16) days before she had a fit, and in a boy of 13 (Case 17) without asking questions, whose father later said he was being treated for petit mal [read: p.183-194].
• Kilner told a woman who believed herself pregnant (Case 21) that she was not and that her period would not come within four or five days; it came seven days later [read: p.317].
• Kilner told a 38-year-old woman from a pre-pubic darkening that her period would come in six or seven days, against her own expectation of a fortnight; two months later she said it came seven days afterwards [read: p.253-254].
• A light C.C.-band spot in the left second intercostal space (Case 37) coincided with fine crepitation found by stethoscope in a patient who had coughed up blood [read: p.295-296].
• In Dr Merrick's gastric-ulcer patient (Case 33) a yellow band spot coincided with the most tender epigastric spot; Dr Merrick saw the aura but not the spot [read: p.276-278].

Relevance: This is the project's only document and the primary source for every claim. It is the founding text of the dicyanin-screen aura method, widely cited later in aura and 'subtle energy' literature [memory, medium]. Its experimental sections (Chapter IV C.C.-band method, Appendix will experiments) are the testable material for the reviewers; Kilner himself ties the 'colour of the aura' hypothesis to the Appendix (footnote p.156). After the QE deep reads this document also holds, in Chapters V-VII, the book's only cases in which a reading preceded the outcome and the counts that can be tabulated (heredity, colour series, epileptics); all remain one unblinded observer's reports.

Mainstream conflict: Mainstream physics and vision science recognise no human aura detectable by dicyanin screens and no bodily 'auric force' acting on the ether [memory, high]. Mainstream accounts attribute faint haze and halos seen against dark backgrounds after dark adaptation to normal visual effects (afterimages, Troxler fading, simultaneous colour contrast, entoptic phenomena) [memory, medium]. The 'ether' as a medium for such forces was dropped after 1905-1920 [memory, high]. N-rays, which Kilner used in earlier work (p.24, 122-123), were later judged not real after Wood's 1904 test [memory, high]. The claims about haze around magnets and uranium conflict with ordinary physics, which predicts no visible glow from a static magnet, and uranium radiation is ionising and not visible this way [memory, high]. Specific medical and psychic claims (pregnancy and dead-foetus diagnosis, temperament and aura colour) have no accepted support [memory, medium]. This field is stated as the mainstream view; the reviewers weigh it. Absence of independent replication in the book itself: one observer (Kilner, usually the treating physician and usually knowing the history), no blinding of the diagnostic claims, and Exp. 5-6 test location, not colour [read: deep reads]. The book does contain some counts (heredity Tables I-II, the 100-case colour series, the ten epileptics) and a handful of readings that preceded the outcome or ran against the patient's own expectation; none is blinded, none is replicated by a second observer, and no denominators of the cases tried are given.

Google scan notices and use guidelines. No project content.

Relevance: None; noted for completeness.

Mainstream conflict: none

Index to aura characteristics, complementary colours, cases, diseased states, rays and will-power effects. A navigation aid.

Relevance: Useful for locating the topics of the book; adds no claims.

Mainstream conflict: none

Publisher's catalogue of medical books. It lists Kilner's 'The Human Atmosphere, illustrated, with screens' at $10.00, which shows the screens were sold with the book, an interest of the publisher in its sales [read: digest 06].

Relevance: Shows the book was marketed with the dicyanin screens; the publisher has a commercial stake in the book and is not a neutral source on its merits.

Mainstream conflict: none

Blank pages, library ownership marks, due-date notices and an index of unrelated (Masonic and fraternal) subjects. No project content.

Relevance: None.

Mainstream conflict: none

The inventor's own later work. Kilner is the only experimenter in nearly every account. New since 1911 [read: p.v-vi, 47-140]: (1) electrification: a subject on an insulated stool charged from a Wimshurst machine; the aura vanishes and returns, enlarged by up to about 50 per cent, an effect that on one subject (M.W., May 1918) took 24-48 hours to fade; about ten described cases of 1915-1918; (2) chemical fumigation from July 1912 (iodine turns the exposed side red-brown, bromine green or blue, with the boundary at the body's median line); (3) a magnet near the body (no polarity); (4) surface electricity mapped with gold-leaf electroscopes, judged independent of the aura; (5) hypnosis experiments with Dr A. Douglas on two women (17 experiments); (6) a microscope-focus test: dicyanin shifts the eye's focus, 50 accepted series of roughly 150-200 run, with the experimenter secretly displacing the focus and rejecting series that did not re-match (the one concrete blinding-like control in the book); this replaces the 1911 'visual purple' explanation; (7) a firmer claim that the aura is 'an ultra-violet phenomenon' and that colours seen belong to 'a second and higher spectrum', with no quartz, filter or spectrograph test; (8) the 'ultra-outer aura' recast as an ill-defined extension of the outer aura, which electrification can produce; (9) the statement 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)'; (10) corpses examined on 'several occasions' hours after death with no aura seen; the claim that 95 per cent of normal-sighted people can see the aura (source: Kilner, plus 'one gentleman' reporting 1 in 400 failures); wartime loss of the German dicyanin supply, with Kilner too old to continue. Carried over: the artist's model's colour-willing Exps 1-6 (1911 Appendix Case 42) reappear unchanged as Case 25 in Chapter V; Exp. 5 'exact centre' and Exp. 6 'about half an inch' off; no second observer for the localisation trials and no new spot-location trials. 'Mrs. A.' is named in Exp. 6; whether she is the model of Case 11, Case 25 or a third woman is not stated. The 1915 repeat with the artist's model (Case 11, June 1915): one subject, large Wimshurst, charging 'some minutes' past disappearance; ten inches by head, fifteen by trunk, six by legs a few minutes afterwards and a further 3 inches about half an hour later; Kilner alone measured; not blinded. Women changing colour at will: rests on the one model, two hypnotised women (Miss X. failed awake, Mrs Y. made 'some little alteration' awake) and 'several women' patients not described and 'unavailable for experimental purposes'; no count of men or boys tested. Photography: 1911 'negative, owing to the inordinate exposures'; 1920 preface 'occasionally... photographed to a slight extent but not by any means satisfactorily'; no experiment described. Methylene-blue screen substituted unwittingly for dicyanin three times (one described: a lady 'quite unable to see the aura'); several intentional tests 'always found inert'; no numbers. Retractions and changes [read: p.98, 113, 135-137, 162 fn, 300]: a footnote admits that of two 'healthy symmetrical' cases in the 1911 edition one 'had previously had an epileptic fit, which was not at the time admitted' (a later healthy-looking case, 51, also proved to have had epilepsy 27 years earlier, which Kilner says he could not have suspected without the fuller history); the belief that electrical enlargement quickly faded 'was found to be an error'; the bromine colour variation was misattributed to differences between subjects; the early belief in an electro-magnetic origin is dropped; the Outer Aura is no longer 'entirely independent of the will'; the closing admits 'some of the hypotheses... will have to be rejected'. The visual-purple explanation of 1911 is replaced without a retraction sentence. Dr Merrick's two cases are repeated (could see the aura, not the C.C. spot).

Key claims

• The aura is 'an ultra-violet phenomenon', and the colours some women produce by will belong to 'a second and higher spectrum' [read: p.v, 72-79].
• A subject on an insulated stool charged from a Wimshurst machine loses both auras and on discharge regains them enlarged by up to about 50 per cent, an effect that can last 24-48 hours [read: p.91-101].
• Iodine, bromine and chlorine fumes directed at one side of the body change the colour of that side's aura only, stopping at the median line, and the effect is not a skin effect [read: p.109-118].
• Dicyanin shifts the eye's focus (a microscope refocusing test, 50 accepted series), and the larger the shift the more easily the aura is seen [read: p.59-70].
• Some women, but no man or boy yet tested, can change the colour of their auras by voluntary effort [read: p.v, 78, 121-126].
• An observer who cannot see the aura through a dicyanin screen can be made to see it, and 95 per cent of people with normal sight can see it [read: p.2 fn, 70-71].

Relevance: The inventor's later statement of his own position (priority 1 of the Investigator) and the only place where he reports his own retractions, additional experiments and the ultra-violet hypothesis. The Physicist, Mathematician and Contrarian each said they had not read it in full; this deep read closes that gap.

Mainstream conflict: Same as the 1911 book, with additions: mainstream vision science finds no ultra-violet sensitivity of the human retina beyond the faint near-UV response in aphakic eyes, and the human lens absorbs most UV [memory, medium; to be web-checked by the reviewers]. A 'second, higher spectrum' repeating the colour series beyond violet has no support in mainstream colour science [memory, high]. The gold-leaf electroscope and Wimshurst effects are physical measurements, but the aura changes attributed to them were observed by Kilner alone without blinding. Retraction of the 'healthy symmetrical' cases is the author's own statement.

A Spiritualist teaching booklet that markets the author's 'Aurospecs' goggles and courses. Stake: Boddington is the maker and sole seller of Aurospecs (one guinea; refills 5s a pair; also sells Kilner's book at 10/6 and his own lessons and a three-guinea postal course), holds only a provisional patent, sells only to people who accept 'psychic science', and prints only the testimonials he selected. His account is reported as the seller's characterization beside Kilner's own text, not as neutral fact. Testimony: Dr Drysdale Anderson 'purchased Aurospecs in 1929' and a Daily Chronicle article of 14 March 1930 'confirmed Dr. Kilner's researches' (Boddington's words; the article is not quoted). Anderson's own sentence, dated 19 Sept 1929, is that he and his wife 'can make out the aura (through the glasses), but it appeared to be only some three inches thick'. Seven buyer testimonials (mist, sparks, 'X-ray' transparency of hands, one 'may have been due to imagination'); a claimed 75-100 per cent demonstration success with no numbers or criteria; A. E. Mundy (chemist who 'compounded the original Kilner Screens twenty years ago') examined Aurospecs and says 'The aura is easily seen by those who persevere... What the nature of the aura is I am not prepared to say'. Mundy's initials and description are inconsistent within the booklet, and Boddington also says an anonymous scientist who compounded Kilner's dicyanin made his screens on condition his name was withheld; the two accounts are not reconciled. Boddington himself warns of after-image and suggestion effects and notes an editor's remark that 'large numbers of people will obligingly see anything they are asked to see'. Photographs: the only passage says Miss Scatcherd 'in conjunction with Prof. Baraduc' photographed the aura on films laid across the forehead, with silver coins giving coloured effects that 'resisted acids' when shown at 'the French Academy'. No dates, references or plate details; no connection to Kilner's screens. The frontispiece is a drawing whose lines Boddington says he extended beyond the photographed limits. Dicyanin history: 'the war put an end to his labours'; dicyanin 'superseded by cheaper substitutes after the war'; the original screens cost two to four guineas, which led to 'unscrupulous imitation by coloured water' and to the work being dismissed as 'suggestibility' (his account, with his stake); a search of journals found nobody with first-hand information; a quartz-lens version costs 5 guineas because quartz passes ultra-violet. Sight: the heading 'DICYANINE CURES SHORT SIGHT' is contradicted by the text under it, which reports Kilner's finding that only presbyopic people noticed improvement and 'not... in cases of myopia or emmetropia'; Boddington treats this as support for improving defective vision in general and invites oculists to try.

Key claims

• Dr Drysdale Anderson and his wife made out the aura through Aurospecs in 1929, seeing it about three inches thick, and a Daily Chronicle article of 14 March 1930 confirmed Kilner's work (Boddington's statement; article not seen) [read: p.6, advertisement].
• Aurospecs are a continuation of Kilner's dicyanin screens and render the aura visible to people who persevere (Mundy, 6 June 1929, a seller-supplied endorsement) [read: advertisement].
• The aura was photographed on films by Scatcherd and Baraduc, with coloured effects that resisted acids [read: p.11-12].
• Dicyanin strengthens the sight of presbyopic people (Kilner); Boddington extends this to short sight and defective vision in general [read: p.18, 21, 37].

Relevance: Late continuation of the screen method after Kilner's death, and the only document in the record that addresses the 1914-1930 gap in dicyanin supply (wartime loss, cost, substitutes). It is secondary and written by a seller; it is the source of the Drysdale Anderson, Scatcherd/Baraduc and Mundy leads.

Mainstream conflict: Spiritualist interpretation (ectoplasm, 'invisible instructors', fixed meanings of auric colours, aura that 'lights an electric lamp') conflicts with mainstream science [memory, high]. The testimonials describe effects consistent with strongly coloured filters and after-images, which the author himself warns about; none is a controlled test [read].

A secondhand French review of Kilner's book, with the author's own informal trials. Count de Rochas and de Fontenay received the book and a box of 'four screens' from M. de Vesme in autumn 1911. Result: 'nous n'avons pas pu obtenir avec les écrans du Dr Kilner les résultats que nous faisait espérer l'ouvrage'; de Rochas and the non-seeing persons he tried 'n'a rien vu'; de Fontenay saw nothing relating to Kilner's descriptions, nor did friends who took turns as observer and subject; he doubts Dr Jean-Charles Roux did better. He gives no numbers, dates, screen concentrations or light levels, and calls the failure 'une simple réserve et pas du tout une dénégation' because a book only imperfectly replaces oral instruction; 'Mille expériences négatives ne prévaudront jamais contre une seule expérience positive.' He is sympathetic, not hostile. He reports the O'Donnell claim (New-York Herald 15 June 1911; Journal de Chicago 24 June): Dr Patrick S. O'Donnell repeated Kilner's experiments at Mercy Hospital, Chicago, before about twenty physicians, with four young women; and a July 1911 clipping says O'Donnell watched a dying man for half an hour through a screen and the 'radiation' vanished at the moment of death (the headline says 'photographed', the text says only 'saw'). O'Donnell is an interested party (his own claim); de Fontenay notes he had not corrected or completed the report since July 1911. He suggests Kilner may be seeing the ordinary heat and water-vapour 'auras' (a refractive-index effect of warm moist air), then gives Kilner's arguments against it (the haze is unaffected by body temperature, movement or draughts). He notes Kilner's failed photography (panchromatic, ultra-violet and infra-red plates) and the history of N-rays. He proposes two blind verification tests that, per the article, Kilner did not perform: (1) paint magnets uniformly, demagnetise some by heating, and have a seer pick the magnetised ones; (2) a board with 25 numbered pairs of wires, a battery switched every 5 minutes to a different pair by an operator in a distant room, a seer and a secretary recording which pair 'lights up' over 24 observations in two hours. No result of either is recorded. He cites de Rochas's earlier practice of having a helper suppress or invert a magnet's current unexpectedly while a sensitive subject described the poles' colours. Werner and Caan note (p.189): R. Werner showed that normal human tissues have a 'photo-activité, faible et incertaine'; M. Caan of Heidelberg confirmed it, mainly for brain; after ashing almost all organs contain a substance that makes air conduct (brain most, heart and liver less, kidneys and spleen almost inactive); 'Cette substance est-elle identique au radium ? Il est difficile de répondre.' The parenthesis '(Pour Kilner, sur le vivant, des écrans photographiques spéciaux seraient nécessaires, comme le platino-cyanure pour les rayons X)' is the reviewer's, not Werner's or Caan's. No dates, instruments or sample sizes.

Key claims

• With the box of four Kilner screens, de Rochas, de Fontenay and their friends could not see the aura Kilner describes [read: p.86].
• Dr O'Donnell repeated Kilner's experiments before about twenty physicians at Mercy Hospital, Chicago, in 1911 (newspaper report relayed by de Rochas; O'Donnell's own claim) [read: p.80, 90-91].
• A blind test with magnets of which some had been secretly demagnetised, or with a remote-switched array of 25 wire pairs, would confirm or refute Kilner's physical auras; neither test is reported as done [read: p.88-90].
• Normal human tissue, chiefly brain, acts weakly on photographic material and its ash makes air conduct electricity (Werner, confirmed by Caan, Heidelberg; second-hand) [read: p.189].

Relevance: The only independent contemporary negative trial found so far, and the only contemporary design for a blind test of the method. Also relays the O'Donnell positive claim and the Werner/Caan item that Feerhow linked to Kilner.

Mainstream conflict: The French negative result agrees with mainstream expectation; the O'Donnell account conflicts with it. The heat-and-vapour candidate is an ordinary-physics explanation raised by de Fontenay himself. N-rays were later judged not real [memory, high].