Curious Myths of the Middle Ages

[patchbunny]

A friend pointed out that, Sabine Baring-Gould, now has had some of his works up on Wikipedia as they've long passed out of copyright. One of them is Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, from 1866.

There's a rather lengthy section on dowsing, where Sabine Baring-Gould takes a fairly skeptical take on the practice. From the last part of the chapter, where he experiments with pendulum dowsing for metals:

I remember having been much perplexed by reading a series of experiments made with a pendulous ring over metals, by a Mr. Mayo; he ascertained that it oscillated in various directions under peculiar circumstances, when suspended by a thread over the ball of the thumb. I instituted a series of experiments, and was surprised to find the ring vibrate in an unaccountable manner in opposite directions over different metals. On consideration, I closed my eyes whilst the ring was oscillating over gold, and on opening them I found that it had become stationary. I got a friend to change the metals whilst I was blindfolded—the ring no longer vibrated. I was thus enabled to judge of the involuntary action of muscles, quite sufficient to have deceived an eminent medical man like Mr. Mayo, and to have perplexed me till I succeeded in solving the mystery[7].

 

[NewtonTrino]

The James Randi of his age apparently.

 

[catsmate]

The James Randi of his age apparently.

Not really; he was a theist, believed in a lot of supernatural phenomena and (from what I remember) the logic of some of work, pertaining to the existence of god, was poor.

Though he did team up with Sherlock Holmes.

Curious Myths of the Middle Ages has been available on archive.org for a while in the usual formats.

 

[patchbunny]

Curious Myths of the Middle Ages has been available on archive.org for a while in the usual formats.

I thought I found something new.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

Well, it's still interesting, and some of us weren't familiar with that particular work already.

 

[catsmate]

I thought I found something new.

Sorry. I trawl archive.org fairly regularly.