WOMAN’S STRANGE POWER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 5, 31 December 1912, Page 7

WOMAN’S STRANGE POWER.

ANTISEPTIC TOUCH, An extraordinary story, vouched for by two fully-qualified physicians, comes from Bordeaux, relating to the strange power possessed by a woman whom the doctors designate for convenience Madame X. Madame X. (says the Paris correspondent of the ‘Daily Telegraph’) kept in her house a sort of collection of dead animals and plants, which never decayed. She said that their state of preservation was not due to any chemical preparation. She merely touched them with her hands for a short time every day. In a word, she had the power to “sterilise” objects, animal or vegetable, by her simple touch. In this way she had preserved, still sleek and shining, the fur of a weasel shot four years before. Madame X. made no claim to mediumistic powers. She merely affirmed as a physical fact this strange antiseptic quality of her touch. The doctors submitted Madame X. to the most rigid tests. They chose several specimens of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and submitted them daily to the touch of the lady. These specimens were wrapped up, ticketed, and kept under lock and key, except for a quarter of an hour’s treatment. Here are some extracts from the report drawn up by the two doctors, after . experiments lasting several weeks: A rose, after ten days, dried up, but preserv ed its colouring. An oyster dried up in thirteen days, without decay or odour. A goldfinch, which had died in a-cage, dried up rapidly, and after three days presented all the appearance of having been preserved by means of arsenic. The yellow of the wing and the red of the crest, instead of fading, became more and more intense. The report ends with the following words:—“Such are the facts—given absolutely as they occurred, and with the sole view of complete exactitude. Is it possible to comment upon them in the present state of science? That is for the scientists to say.”