[Gutenberg 42318] • The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism / With Dr. Doddridge's Dream

This book published in 1886 in New York, is a collection, containing the following individual essays: The Salem Witchcraft, A History Of Salem Witchcraft. A REVIEW OF CHARLES W. UPHAM'S GREAT WORK FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, WITH NOTES, BY THE EDITOR OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL JOURNAL: The Planchette Mystery, Author Unknown: Modern Spiritualism, by Harriet Beecher Stowe: and Dr. Doddridge’s Dream, Author Unknown. (144 pages)

The Publisher has copy-edited this book to improve the formatting, style and accuracy of the text to make it readable. This did not involve changing the substance of the text.

Introduction:

.....The object in reprinting this most interesting review is simply to show the progress made in moral, intellectual, and physical science. The reader will go back with us to a time— not very remote — when nothing was known of Phrenology and Psychology; when men and women were persecuted, and even put to death, through the baldest ignorance and the most pitiable superstition. If we were to go back still farther, to the Holy Wars, we should find cities and nations drenched in human blood through religious bigotry and intolerance. Let us thank God that our lot is cast in a more fortunate age, when the light of revelation, rightly interpreted by the aid of SCIENCE, points to the Source of all knowledge, all truth, all light.

.....When we know more of Anatomy, Physiology, Physiognomy, and the Natural Sciences generally, there will be a spirit of broader liberality, religious tolerance, and individual freedom. Then all men will hold themselves accountable to God, rather than to popes, priests, or parsons. Our progenitors lived in a time that tried men's souls, as the following lucid review most painfully shows.

S. R W.

CONTENTS OF THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT:

The Place — The Salemite of Forty Years Ago — How the Subject was opened — Careful Historiography — The Actors in the Tragedy — Philosophy of the Delusion — Character of the Early Settlement — First Causes — Death of the Patriarch — Growth of Witchcraft — Trouble in the Church — Rev. Mr. Burroughs — Deodat Lawson — Parris — a Malignant — A Protean Devil — State of Physiology — William Penn as a Precedent — Phenomena of Witchcraft — Parris and his Circle — The Inquisitions — Sarah Good — A Child Witch — The Towne Sisters — Depositions of Parris and his Tools — Goody Nurse's Excommunication — Mary Easty — Mrs. Cloyse — The Proctor Family — The Jacobs Family — Giles and Martha Corey — Decline of the Delusion — The Physio-Psychological Causes of the Trouble — The Last of Parris — "One of the Afflicted"—Her Confession — The Transition — The Fetish Theory Then and Now — The Views of Modern Investigators — Importance of the Subject

CONTENTS OF THE PLANCHETTE MYSTERY:

What Planchette is and does (with review of Facts and Phenomena) — The Press on Planchette (with farther details of Phenomena) — Theory First — That the Board is moved by the hands that rest upon it — Theory Second — "It is Electricity or Magnetism" — Proof that Electricity has nothing to do with it — Theory Third— The Devil Theory — Theory of a Floating Ambient Mentality — "To Daimonion" — The Demon — "It is some principle of nature as yet unknown" — Theory of the Agency of Departed Spirits — Planchette's own Theory — The Rational Difficulty — The Medium — The Doctrine of Spheres — The Moral and Religious Difficulty — What this Modern Development is, and what is to come of it