LeBon-G · Source catalogue

A short review by Gerry Vassilatos urging readers to buy BSRF xerographic copies of Le Bon's two books (catalogue numbers B0036 'Evolution of Matter', B0037 'Evolution of Forces'). Its motive is Thomas Moray: the reviewer says Moray's writings and biographies often mention Le Bon with 'great importance', that Moray studied the texts to pursue materials science and 'vibratory dynamics', that he had trouble getting library copies during the war, and that the books therefore hold 'very deep secrets' about radioactivity and releasing intra-atomic energy. None of this is documented in the review: no Moray statement is quoted, no page or chapter of Le Bon is cited, and there are no equations or data. The review reports Le Bon's views second-hand: radioactivity from an etheric particle bombardment of dense nuclei (a belief it also attributes to Tesla); Tesla-coil-like engines whose small electrical bombardments would release more energy than the trigger; Crookes tubes, Tesla and Oudin coils and Roentgen tubes all treated by Le Bon as dissociating matter toward pure ether; radium heated red-hot losing activity for about a week; UV of the right frequency making radium-like materials; infra-red 'radar' and photographs inside a darkened room (the reviewer suspects the energy is 'not at all common infrared light'). It also asserts that the books were once 'impossible to obtain, and even supposedly illegal to possess', that records of Le Bon were stricken, and, on hearsay ('as we have subsequently been informed'), that a third privately printed book, 'The Evolution of Matter And Energy', exists under the pseudonym 'Girard Le Beau', held by an unnamed researcher. The photocopies are credited to Dan Winter, whom the reviewer calls a friend and a source on the Moray devices. The review compares the Tesla/Le Bon bombardment view with an 'ex nihilo' view it attributes to Wilhelm Reich. Stake: BSRF publishes the review and sells the books it recommends; the review and the catalogue blurbs are an interested party's characterization, not a neutral description. The catalogue block also links free archive.org copies, which the review text does not mention. A claimed 'third text' and the legal/suppression claims rest on the reviewer's word alone; they are recorded here as his statements with no second source in the folder, not as established or dismissed. QE update (2026-10-08): the review's radium statements were checked against Matter pp.159-176 (deep read). The book reports mainstream radiochemistry from Rutherford, Curie, Ramsay and others: heating drives off the emanation (radon), most of the activity is lost, a quarter (alpha rays only) remains, and full activity returns in about twenty days; no change of half-life is mentioned [read: Matter p.168-169]. [calc] Radon ingrowth after removal, 1-exp(-t ln2/3.82 d), gives 72% recovered at 7 days and 97% at 20 days, which matches the book's 'twenty days or so' and not 'a week'. The Tesla-coil idea the review attributes to Le Bon appears in the books as Le Bon's own conditional projection that an over-unity static machine 'can be considered possible' (Matter p.231) with no device or trial; the review's 'UV makes radium-like materials' corresponds to the photo-leak chapters (Matter pp.180, 386-388), not to a Tesla-coil result.

Key claims

• Moray studied Le Bon's Evolution of Matter and Evolution of Forces and applied techniques from them (reviewer's assertion; no Moray statement quoted).
• Le Bon's books contain 'very deep secrets' about releasing intra-atomic energy and were once hard or illegal to obtain (reviewer's inference; no documentation).
• Le Bon and Tesla attributed radioactivity to bombardment of dense nuclei by very fine etheric particles (reviewer's statement; unclear which sentences are Le Bon's own).
• Small electrical bombardments (Tesla-coil-like engines) can release more energy from matter than they consume (attributed to Le Bon by the reviewer).
• A radium sample heated red-hot loses its activity for about a week (attributed to Le Bon by the reviewer; the only duration figure given). The book (Matter p.168-169, deep read) says the opposite detail: heated or boiled radium keeps about a quarter of its activity (alpha only) and "regains it entirely in twenty days or so"; the passage names no experimenter and is reported, not claimed as Le Bon's own measurement; the emanation "is reduced by one-half in four days". "A week", "Le Bon found" and "altering the half-life of radium" are the reviewer's wording, not the book's.
• Infra-red phosphorescence allows a form of 'radar' and photography in a darkened room (reviewer reporting Le Bon's 'assertions').
• A third privately printed Le Bon book exists under the name 'Girard Le Beau' (hearsay relayed by the reviewer; no copy seen by him according to the text).

Relevance: The only document in the folder that ties Le Bon to Moray. It explains why the project exists and what the reader should look for in the books (high-frequency bombardment, dissociation, black light), but it is a secondary, interested-party source. Every Moray-Le Bon link in the project currently rests on this review and on the reviewer's reading of Moray's writings; the primary books never mention Moray.

Mainstream conflict: The review itself is not a physical claim. The ideas it relays (matter dissociating toward ether, energy release exceeding the trigger) conflict with conservation of energy and mass-energy accounting as understood today; the 'bombardment of nuclei by etheric particles' view for radioactivity conflicts with nuclear decay theory (radioactivity occurs without external triggers). The radium statements as worded (half-life altered; activity lost for a week) conflict with the book's own account and with standard radiochemistry (the half-life is fixed; the emanation is removed and grows back).

Le Bon's sequel to The Evolution of Matter (454 PDF pages; 33 pages OCR'd, the rest text layer). Part I 'The New Principles' attacks the 'present anarchy' of physics (quoting Poincare, Mach, Duhem, Picard) and restates eight principles: matter slowly vanishes by dissociation; its products are intermediate between matter and ether; atoms are reservoirs of 'intra-atomic energy'; force and matter are one thing, matter being a stable form of energy and heat, light and electricity unstable forms; most forces (electricity, solar heat) derive from dissociation. He treats time, space, mass and inertia as human constructs, reviews mechanical and 'energetic' explanations and thermodynamics, and argues that the indestructibility and conservation of energy is a dogma that survives by inventing 'potential energy'; he proposes that energy 'degrades' and vanishes (quoting Sabatier and Brunhes) and sketches a cosmic cycle: ether vortices condense into nebulae, atoms, stars, planets, then dissociate back to ether. Part II 'The Problems of Physics' applies this to electricity (electrification by influence, Figs 1-5, described as an apparently indefinite production of electricity from a limited charge and as 'the complete transformation of matter into energy'; the dynamo said to convert intra-atomic energy rather than motion), magnetism and lines of force, and Hertzian waves (his 1899 Branly-Le Bon tests on the opacity of metal boxes and the transparency of walls and sand; metal screens are opaque if closed, cracks let waves through). Further books cover heat and radiant heat, light (amplitude versus wavelength, the infra-red, photographic action), light and heat provoking radioactive 'effluves' from all bodies (priority claimed over Ramsay), phosphorescence (by light, X-rays, chemical reaction including quinine hydration, living beings, gases), and Book IV 'Black Light'. Deep read of Black Light (PDF pp.317-368): Le Bon dates the name to his 1896 note and the work to about 1894; he keeps it for (1) invisible radiations emitted by phosphorescent bodies and (2) infra-red. Experiments with calcium sulphide: a few seconds' sunlight leaves a screen that stays photographically active for about 18 months (exposure needed: 3 days after charging 2 h; 15 d 12 h; 25 d 30 h; 6 months 40 days; 18 months 60 days); statuette photographs in a cellar (8-15 day exposures); polarisation through Iceland spar (duplicated image at half intensity); an artificial 'spectrum' from coloured glass bands; a permanent residue that, after more than 10 years, a minute's paraffin-lamp exposure through ebonite or Japan varnish re-lights (repeatable more than 50 times, finally exhausted) and a 'dark lantern' version he describes as 'darkness added to darkness gives birth to light'. Zinc sulphide behaves oppositely (extinguished by infra-red). He separates infra-red from heat with a glass strip, 1 cm ice troughs and opposite effects on two halves of one ZnS screen, and states the active band as about 0.8-3 microns. With ZnS screens he claims photography through ebonite, Japan varnish and black paper (a house in one minute, a candle in 1/30 s, a printed sketch in an envelope inside an ebonite box) and a table of near-infra-red transparency (lamp-black, antimony and arsenic opaque; ebonite and varnish transparent). He reports a French Minister of Marine asking whether ship and lighthouse lights could be masked and still seen by friendly ships (no trial reported), and forecasts photography of living bodies by their own long-wave emission. Later parts treat plants and radiation, Book V 'Forces of Unknown Origin' (gravitation, with speculative notes on annulling weight, molecular equilibria, form, life, the problem of vital force) and an index. Le Bon quotes Gariel (Physique Biologique) and a letter from 'M. Izarn' as favourable repetitions of the Black Light work and says other physicists failed because they used a photographer's red lamp, which quenches ZnS; both are documented only in this book. The deep reader noted internal slips: a statuette caption (18 months) conflicts with its text (3-4 days), the transparency worked example inverts its own ratio, a 'bodies under 100 C emit hardly beyond 5-6 microns' wording is wrong as printed, and the candle-versus-sunlit-wall brightness claim does not match simple luminance figures. QE deep reads (2026-10-08) added. (1) Electrification by influence, pp.137-153: Le Bon's aluminium 'arrow' is a strip 0.5 cm by 2 cm held motionless under a positively charged body A above a rod B, throwing out small visible sparks (Fig. 2); the footnote says a negative A makes the strip stick to it. Charging method, voltages, distances, thickness and duration ('indefinitely') are not given. He infers the strip is dissociating 'comparable to a fragment of radium' and that, 'if the above experiment were continued for several centuries, we should see the aluminium become gradually less ... and finally disappear', 'the complete transformation of matter into energy' (pp.142-143). No charge, current, weighing, energy accounting or control is reported; unnamed physicists 'impressed' (single source). Electroscope sign reversal (Figs 3-5): a negative ebonite rod held over the ball for about 12 minutes (a few seconds for a pointed rod, never for a flat plate) leaves the instrument negative. Rubbed metal strips reach 1000-1500 V (Fig. 6), only in dry air, and lose the property for about a quarter of an hour (aluminium) after heating. M. de Heen's objection to the electron theory of influence is reported. Battery 2 V per cell versus 50,000 V from a small static machine is explained by 'intra-atomic energy', with no V=Q/C or work-in comparison. (2) Branly-Le Bon 1899 tests, pp.178-196: cubical metal boxes about 50 cm, walls 0.02-2 mm, with a receiving coherer and bell; waves seemed to pass until the door was fitted with half a dozen screws, after which the bell stayed silent (repeated 'many hundreds of times'); thickness had no effect (tin-lined wood 1/100 mm as opaque as 2 mm metal); a 1 mm by 20 cm slit passed waves at all distances available while 100 round 1 cm holes did not above 50 cm; a slit perpendicular to the radiator axis worked at 6-8 times the distance of a parallel one; 1 mm gauze acts as a solid sheet; dielectrics: 10 cm cement silent beyond 7 m (12 m when dry), 30 cm damp cement opaque, dry sand 30 cm transparent to the 40 m available, 40 cm dry stone 40 m, wet stone 25 m; with a 2 cm-spark coil sand 16 m and stone 13 m; water raises absorption; hills are passed round, not through. The joint note is Comptes rendus 1 April 1899, pp.879 ff. (not in the folder). On p.179 Le Bon proposes (unexecuted, 'solely on account of the expense') a beam of parallel Hertzian waves from cylindro-parabolic mirrors and an Oudin resonator to blow up an enemy's ships and magazines from several kilometres, 'rendering war impossible', and says shielding is illusory because of cracks. The Oudin resonator on a 60 cm-spark coil, he says, made metal objects in a 10 m room spark and melted switchboard wiring in his presence (single witness). (3) Hidden forces, pp.392-402, 415-420: Delbruck's suggestion that soaring birds nullify gravitation by intra-atomic energy is 'very difficult to verify, but is not fundamentally absurd' (Le Bon); spiritualist levitation must first be 'rendered beyond dispute'; a footnote reports that the editor (probably Legge) enclosed the needle apparatus that shows attractions by living bodies in a double-walled vacuum bell glass and 'the needle remains motionless, no matter what bodies are brought near', concluding convection currents from heat; Le Bon and Dastre found 'nothing demonstrative' at several seances; N-rays are cited as a warning; Dufour's finding that breathed air contains radioactive particles, and kola and caffeine as dissociation excitants (Dastre said to 'entirely admit' it), are hypotheses with no data. (4) Infra-red plant and antagonism experiments, pp.369-391: black-paper greenhouses (seeds germinate faster then wither in about a fortnight; tomatoes whiten; artichokes blanch but develop well) are given 'only as hints', garden for one season, aeration and heat not controlled; red-glass greenhouses at Juvisy are cited; ZnS screens behind a 2 cm ammoniacal copper-sulphate trough are 14 times brighter than bare (table p.385-386: bare sun 1, shade 2, cobalt glass 7 and 9, copper trough 14; the unit line prints 1/2000 candle power but 14 x 0.002 = 0.028 agrees with the printed 3/100, so 1/500 is implied); the only control is an uncovered strip of the same screen. Internal inconsistency recorded: p.364 lists ammoniacal copper sulphate (1 cm) as 'transparent' to invisible radiation up to 3 microns, while the antagonism experiments use a 2 cm trough of it to remove 'the great majority' of the red and infra-red extinguishing rays (p.384); the book does not reconcile them. Over-unity wording of Le Bon's own: matter's emitted energy under an excitant 'may far exceed that which it has received' (p.38).

Key claims

• Matter is perishable: all atoms slowly dissociate into particles intermediate between matter and ether, and this proceeds in every body (Part I, Principles 1-8).
• Atoms contain an enormous reservoir of 'intra-atomic energy', the source of radioactivity, electricity and solar heat; conservation of energy is a dogma that stays alive by inventing 'potential energy'.
• Electricity is a product of dissociating matter; an aluminium strip 0.5 cm by 2 cm held motionless under a positively charged body and throwing off sparks (Fig. 2, pp.140-143) is 'comparable to a fragment of radium', and if continued for centuries would disappear ('the complete transformation of matter into energy'); no charge, mass, energy or control measurement is given. Electroscope sign reversal after about 12 minutes of a negative rod (Figs 3-5, pp.144-148); the dynamo draws on intra-atomic energy (pp.157-159).
• Light (especially ultra-violet) and heat make all bodies emit radioactive 'effluves'; the usual attribution of radioactivity to radium alone is wrong (pp.251-257).
• A calcium sulphide screen exposed to sunlight for seconds keeps an invisible, photographically detectable afterglow for about 18 months, then retains a permanent residue that dark infra-red radiation can release for years (pp.322-329).
• Infra-red of 0.8-3 microns has a specific action on phosphors that is independent of heating: CaS is brightened, ZnS is extinguished, even with the screen between ice troughs (pp.337-342).
• Ebonite, Japan varnish and black paper opaque to the eye are transparent to infra-red, so objects in opaque boxes can be seen and photographed in the dark with a ZnS screen (pp.344-365).
• Metal boxes closed without any gap are opaque to Hertzian waves; earlier 'transparency' came from cracks and screws (pp.184-192).
• Photography of living bodies by their own invisible long-wave radiation would be possible if a sensitive body were found (p.368).
• A body in which energy is released by an excitant may emit energy that 'may far exceed that which it has received' (Forces p.38); the same idea as a machine (Matter p.231).
• Branly and Le Bon 1899: thin closed metal boxes are opaque and apparent transparency came from door gaps; a slit passes waves far better than many holes, and a slit perpendicular to the radiator axis passes them 6-8 times farther than a parallel one; walls of dry sand and stone are nearly transparent and wet ones much less (pp.184-195).
• Le Bon proposes (not tried, for cost) a parallel Hertzian beam from a battery of parabolic mirrors and Oudin resonators to detonate ironclads and magazines at kilometre range (p.179).
• Hidden forces: Delbruck's anti-gravity soaring birds is 'not fundamentally absurd'; levitation unproved; a vacuum-jacket test (footnote, editor probably Legge) stills the needle that living bodies had seemed to move, pointing to heat convection; seances with Dastre showed 'nothing demonstrative' (pp.400-402).
• Antagonism: ZnS behind a 2 cm trough of ammoniacal copper sulphate is 14 times brighter than bare in sunlight, because the trough removes the infra-red and red 'extinguishing' rays; black-paper greenhouses show infra-red effects on plants (pp.369-391; given by Le Bon as hints only).

Relevance: Primary source for the project. It gives Le Bon's own statement of the dissociation and intra-atomic-energy thesis, the Black Light experiments (the part Moray-circle readers point to), his Hertzian-wave and high-frequency work, and the Tesla-era context. The deep read shows the experiments are described with unusual care (controls, apparatus, exposure times) and that several results correspond to later-standard effects (long afterglow, IR stimulation and quenching, near-IR transparency of dark plastics). After the QE deep reads, Part I cosmology and the remaining Part I/III chapters rest on digests only; the electrification-by-influence, Hertzian-wave opacity, infra-red plant, antagonism and hidden-force passages are now deep-read.

Mainstream conflict: Intra-atomic energy released by external triggers (light, heat, chemistry) in all matter, and the claimed dogmatic status of conservation of energy, conflict with mainstream physics (energy conservation holds; ordinary bodies are not radioactive in this sense; the electrification-by-influence experiments are explained by induction, corona or point discharge and ion wind with energy supplied by the operator or the charging source (reviewers to weigh; the deep read records no energy accounting or control)). The Black Light chapters conflict with mainstream mainly in interpretation: 'invisible light of small amplitude' and 'darkness added to darkness' are not needed, since the observations match infra-red stimulation and quenching of trapped charge in sulphide phosphors. Part I/V speculation on annulling gravitation and cosmic cycles is outside mainstream. Status of specific claims is for the reviewers. The Hertzian-wave shielding results (seams and slots leak, closed metal is opaque, wet walls absorb more) agree with standard shielding practice [memory, high]; the weapon proposal is an untried speculation; the plant and copper-sulphate antagonism results carry an internal inconsistency with the book's own transparency table.

Le Bon's main work (489 PDF pages, almost wholly OCR). Book I: new ideas on matter and the history of his discovery. He says universal dissociation of matter is a fact and 'intra-atomic energy' an interpretation; he reproduces his 1896 'black light' note, claims priority over Becquerel, Rutherford, J. J. Thomson, Lenard and others, and says the Academy of Sciences received his notes badly. Book II: intra-atomic energy and its magnitude. Quantitative claims in the digest: to give a bullet the speed of the dissociated particles he says a firearm would need 'one million three hundred and forty thousand barrels of gunpowder'; one gram at the lowest measured particle speed would give 'six thousand eight hundred million horse-power' if stopped in one second; a 1 g bronze sphere rotating fast (the 'theoretical machine' of a pin-head rotor) stores the work of thousands of locomotives; J. J. Thomson's atom-energy estimate is quoted. He says the apparent violation of conservation is removed if matter is a reservoir, replying to objectors Poincare, Painleve, Naquet, Despaux, Duclaud, Laisant, Pio and Somerhausen, and to Kelvin's 1904 remark that radium energy cannot come from the atom (which, per translator's note, Kelvin later withdrew). Book III-V: the ether, vortices and an 'intermediate world' between matter and ether; electricity as semi-material product of dematerialization; figures of dissociated particles ('equilibria'). Book VI: constitution, mobility and evolution of matter, chemical equilibria, intra-atomic chemistry, and the birth, evolution and end of matter. Second Part: the experiments. The deep read (PDF pp.389-432) records, with tables checked on page images: (1) photo-electric leak of a gold-leaf electroscope under sunlight and spark ultra-violet, positive as well as negative, varying widely between metals and surfaces (sunlight: amalgamated tin 1000, zinc 980, aluminium 800 down to 2 for gold, steel, copper; spark light: aluminium 1000 down to steel 80; negative 360 deg/min at 20 cm maximum); poor conductors (wood, cardboard) show positive greater than negative at 25 cm; (2) extreme ultra-violet below about 0.185 micron ionizes air, absorbed by 2 cm of air (Lenard, Schumann); a law that dissociating power is inversely proportional to penetration; (3) flame gases discharge the electroscope (60 deg in 30 s at 10 cm; still active after a 2 m water-cooled worm) and metals show 'fatigue' needing a day's rest; (4) quinine sulphate becomes phosphorescent and 'radio-active' on hydration (1 mg water per g; 12 deg in the first minute), hydrogen, oxygen and acetylene evolved in reactions discharge the electroscope (9-11 deg/min), phosphorus rubbed with damp leather 80 deg/min, with controls; (5) uranium, thorium and radium bromide give lower discharge when hydrated; thorium chloride carried down with barium sulphate gave 16 deg against an expected maximum of 9, and the surface of the radioactive layer matters; (6) ionization of gases, recombination and ions of different origin; (7) an 'emanation' from all metals and many bodies warmed by only about 30 C or left eight days in the dark (1-2 deg/min); (8) finely divided odorous bodies give nil. The translator F. Legge records dissent and confirmation in footnotes: Kalahne (Heidelberg) confirms the quinine effect but not the interpretation; Ramsay and Spencer repeated the ultra-violet charge experiments (Phil. Mag. October 1906) with a different explanation of metal fatigue; Miss Gates (Rutherford's pupil) agreed with the cause but later admitted her ultra-violet explanation failed; J. J. Thomson attributes emanation in ordinary substances to radioactive impurity; Elster and Geitel propose a penetrating external radiation; Norman Campbell (Cavendish) attributes reaction discharge to heat, and Le Bon replies that quinine hydration on cooling and phosphorus oxidation involve no temperature rise; Legge writes that the Faraday-cage experiment 'would be satisfactory to have checked by an independent observer'. Le Bon himself warns that electroscope readings have 'no very precise quantitative value' and that unknown causes superpose on known ones. Chapter XII (digest only) claims that mercury, magnesium and aluminium treated with traces of each other (with amalgam, reagent) become chemically 'transformed' (oxidize dry, decompose water, alumina tufts, higher EMF) and keep this under vaseline oil; Chapter XIII claims effluves pass thin glass and ebonite and make X-rays in an electrodeless vacuum; Chapter XIV reproduces documents on priority against Becquerel (Niepce 1867, Becquerel's reflection/polarisation claims, Thomson 1898). The deep reader noted six internal inconsistencies, all arithmetic or wording slips (lamp-black signs, 'single to triple', quinine ordering, '70 per minute', receptacle size, an announced result without data). QE deep reads (2026-10-08) added. (1) Baseline: Le Bon states an instrument criterion, 'an electroscope can only be used for this kind of research when it does not give a loss greater than one angular degree in an hour after being covered with its cap' (p.354), calibrates about 14 V per degree (90 degrees = 1,300 V), and reads the leaf shadow to a quarter degree. No per-experiment capped or dark blank is tabulated: the 8-day dark cylinder gives 1-2 degrees per minute (60-120 times the 1 degree-per-hour criterion), the warmed cage 5-6 degrees per minute. For the spark-ultra-violet runs he reports running a black-paper blank after each experiment and finding spurious rapid discharge 'several times' from Hertzian influences, cured by earthing one Leyden-jar coating, a coherer-and-bell monitor, sharp electrode points and wiping the quartz every 10-15 minutes (pp.381-383). He explains why others failed to repeat his work: 'many observers have neglected' the large (10 cm) receiving plate and so 'have been unable to repeat my former experiments' (p.381; no observers named). Solar-ultra-violet 'disappearance' rests on four dated spectrograms (23 and 30 August, 26 October and 12 November 1901) with the slow-discharge days tied to the missing ultra-violet but no dark rate given for the same days (pp.371-374). The 'tin 40 times uranium' result is 40 degrees in 10 s for a sunlit amalgamated tin mirror versus 6 degrees in 60 s for a uranium nitrate screen (p.388); the printed 'four times as great' evidently means forty (40 x 70,000 = 2.8 million, matching his 3,000,000), and the two rates are for different processes and conditions. (2) Heated radium (pp.159-176): the loss on heating, the retained quarter (alpha only), full recovery 'in twenty days or so', and the emanation 'reduced by one-half in four days' are reported without a named experimenter (Rutherford and Curie are the sources named nearby); Le Bon doubts Ramsay's helium-from-radium transmutation reading; the 'week' and 'half-life altered' wordings are not in these pages. His own contributions there are zinc-sulphide scintillation screens that also work with uranium and thorium and a diamond phosphorescence test for radium samples. (3) Chemical theory of radioactivity (Chapter VI, pp.201-216): radioactivity is said to arise from special 'chemical' reactions between a body and an infinitesimal trace of another, so 'an absolutely pure body cannot be radio-active'; cited examples are mercury plus a trace of tin (intense under light), dried quinine salts rehydrated, and the phosphorescence of slightly active radium salts lost on heating and back 'after a few days'; light is said to act by resonance on atoms pictured as miniature solar systems whose peripheral particles escape tangentially. Lifetime of radium: Heydweiler 0.02 mg per day from 5 g (137 years for 1 g of 5 g) is judged too long, Le Bon concluding 'a gramme would last one hundred years'. The prediction (pp.212-214): 'radium will never be isolated'; if ever isolated it 'will have lost all the properties which render its combinations so interesting'; he would 'much more willingly admit the existence of an unknown compound of barium'; he offers the silence of radium holders on isolation attempts as support (reference given: Revue Scientifique 5 May 1900). Metallic radium was isolated in 1910 by Curie and Debierne [memory, high; to be web-checked by reviewers]. (4) Over-unity and passage experiments (pp.227-243, 444-447): Le Bon writes that a hand-driven static machine at 50,000 V and 2 A would give 100,000 W (136 horse-power, 'per second' being a unit slip) and that 'the creation, in the future, of such a machine ... an apparatus giving forth a power extremely superior to that expended in setting it in motion ... can be considered possible', to be reached by 'placing matter in a state in which it can be easily dissociated' (sunlight is 'a model agent'); no device or measurement. The Oudin-resonator experiment (with Dr Oudin; Fleming's 1900 Cantor lectures called it 'striking'): an induction coil (at least 30 cm spark) charges Leyden jars across a 1 cm gap into a tapped large solenoid; the brush at the first spire passes through a strip of glass or ebonite, thickness not above 1/2 mm, 'without piercing it', claimed at 'several hundred thousand volts'; frequency, plate size and distances not given; Le Bon says the direction of the charge proves positive ions; a hand-drawn figure (Fig. 25) and one photograph (Fig. 26) show a far-side glow broader than the near-side tuft. Legge repeated it with an Elster-Geitel Tesla transformer (Ernecke, Berlin) immersed in solid vaseline, 35 cm coil, two 40 cm Leyden jars in parallel, 1 cm gap, passing discs of glass, ebonite, sulphur and shellac 1/2 cm thick and paraffin wax 1 cm, saying the substance 'must be an insulator'; his charge test used an inverted funnel 'above the apparatus' (not stated to be beyond the plate), citing von Wesendonk for positive Tesla secondary discharge. Le Bon says X-rays showing the bones of the hand on a platinocyanide screen are made when the effluves act on a glass vessel with no electrodes and high vacuum (pp.237, 446-447; no apparatus details). He reports a Faraday-cage control (earthed gauze stops Geissler tubes lighting but not platinocyanide letters, so those are lit by ultra-violet, p.241). Details the deep read lists as fitting a displacement-current (dielectric-barrier) reading: high frequency needed, insulators only, allowed thickness rising with tension, plate unharmed, same fields light Geissler tubes through glass at metres; creepage round the edges is not excluded because plate dimensions and edge tests are not reported; no metal-plate, collector-beyond-plate or direct-current control is reported. Digest correction: the plate thickness is 1/2 cm (not 4 cm) and both footnotes on p.446 are Legge's. Other digest-sourced items now deep-read: the translator's request for an independent check on the Faraday-cage experiment is Legge's (p.411), not Le Bon's.

Key claims

• Matter is not indestructible: all matter dissociates, spontaneously or when provoked, into electrons and other particles intermediate between matter and ether (Book I).
• Atoms hold an enormous reservoir of intra-atomic energy; one gram of dissociating matter would yield about 6,800 million horse-power if its particles were stopped in a second, and a stable atom's energy can be sustained by gyration (Book II).
• Radioactivity, electricity and solar heat all derive from the dissociation of matter, so the radium sources of radioactivity are only a special case (Book II ch.III).
• Every electrified body loses charge under light of any region of the spectrum, positive and negative alike, at rates that depend strongly on the metal and its surface; extreme ultra-violet (below about 0.185 micron) ionizes air itself (Second Part, chs V).
• Chemical reactions (hydration of quinine sulphate, oxidation of phosphorus, hydrogen and acetylene evolution) and flame gases produce a radioactive-like conductivity that is not explained by heat (chs VI-VII).
• Ordinary metals hold a limited store of 'emanation' that heat releases and rest renews, so all bodies are weakly radioactive (ch.X).
• Mercury, magnesium and aluminium can be made to change chemical behaviour by traces of each other, showing that chemical species are variable (ch.XII, digest only).
• Le Bon was first to the universal dissociation of matter and radioactivity of ordinary bodies, ahead of Becquerel, Rutherford and J. J. Thomson, and was resisted by the French scientific hierarchy (ch.XIV and Introduction).
• Radioactivity is produced by special chemical reactions between a body and an infinitesimal trace of another; an absolutely pure body cannot be radioactive (Chapter VI, pp.207-216); examples cited are mercury with a trace of tin and rehydrated quinine salts.
• Prediction: metallic radium 'will never be isolated', and if it is ever isolated 'it will have lost all the properties which render its combinations so interesting'; radium chloride is probably barium contaminated by an unknown compound (pp.212-214). A gramme of radium would last about a hundred years (p.212).
• A hand-worked static machine at 50,000 V and 2 A (100,000 W) is a possible route to a machine giving 'a power extremely superior to that expended in setting it in motion', by finding how to dissociate matter easily (p.231); no device or trial.
• Brushes from an Oudin resonator, at 'several hundred thousand volts', pass without piercing through glass or ebonite plates up to 1/2 mm and are positive ions; with a Tesla transformer Legge passed 1/2 cm discs of ebonite, glass, sulphur and shellac and 1 cm of paraffin (pp.235-237, 444-447; apparatus details incomplete).
• An electrodeless evacuated glass vessel in the effluves emits X-rays showing the bones of a hand on a platinocyanide screen (pp.446-447; no apparatus details).
• Instrument baseline and repeatability: an electroscope is acceptable if it loses at most 1 angular degree per hour capped (p.354); other observers failed to repeat the light-leak work because they omitted a 10 cm receiving plate (p.381).

Relevance: The foundational primary source. It carries Le Bon's central theses and the evidence offered for them, including the translator's contemporaneous footnotes recording independent confirmations, objections and the lack of independent checks. For the Moray context it is the book the Vassilatos review calls Moray's 'sourcebook'; the deep read found no mention of Moray. The deep reads now cover the methods and experimental chapters (pp.350-432), heated radium (pp.159-176), the chemical theory of radioactivity (pp.201-216) and the over-unity and effluve-passage pages (pp.227-243, 444-447); the energy-magnitude calculations (Book II ch.I, read by the reviewers), the 'equilibria' photographs, Chapter XII and Chapter XIV still rest on digests.

Mainstream conflict: Claims that all matter slowly dissociates and that intra-atomic energy is released by light, heat or chemical reaction conflict with mainstream physics: stable nuclei do not decay on demand and the energy accounting (conservation) holds. Many of the measured effects are accepted under other explanations: the negative leak is the photoelectric effect (Hertz, Hallwachs, Lenard, Einstein 1905); the positive leak at close range is photo-ionization of air by vacuum UV; closed-vessel ionization came from radon, radioactive materials and cosmic rays; hydrogen and flame ionization are known effects; the plate and spark effects of Chapter VIII follow the Rutherford-Soddy decay chain model. Whether any effect indicates atomic disintegration is for the reviewers to weigh. Further points from the QE deep reads: heated-radium results in the book (emanation removed, quarter of the activity left, recovery in 20 days) match standard radiochemistry and are reported from others; the prediction that radium cannot be isolated and that isolated radium would be inactive conflicts with the 1910 isolation of radioactive radium metal [memory, high; reviewers to verify]; an over-unity machine conflicts with energy conservation, and the effluve passage through plates is mainstream-explicable by displacement current or surface discharge (for the physicist to weigh).