Gentola--I perceive that the students are being taught as to the properties and effects of poisons. As I am wholly unlearned in the science of chemistry, I am not prepared to ask questions concerning the lesson, but, if you may not consider the question absurd, I should like to ask if poisons have any effect upon the spirit, either in or apart from the physical body. Dr. Blank--Here, madame, are a collection of mineral poisons, here a collection of vegetable poisons, and here again an assortment of animal poisons. Some are in the form of powders, others in the form of liquids. All are labelled poison, yet strictly speaking there are no poisons. The law of affinity, which is one expression of magnetism, rules the domains of attraction and of repulsion. That like attracts like is an axiom, and the inspired Hahnemann caught a ray of truth when he perceived that similia similibus curanter. I must not allow myself to offer a dissertation on this point, but I may say that chemical affinities are qualities inherent in all substances and in all organisms. Equilibrium of chemical affinities means health; the reverse means disease. Remember that in all atoms are all possible qualities, and that any one aggregation of atoms contains exactly the same proportion of these qualities as are in any other equal aggregation of atoms. It may come about that in a physical organism, through the energies of attraction and affinity, an undue amount of a certain quality may become preponderant; a condition of repulsion ensues, and if extremely violent it may occasion dissolution of such organism. By certain of your learned ones, so termed poisonous effects are fairly well understood, the involved principles less so. The foregoing remarks are preliminary to a more direct reply to your question, the importance of which cannot be overestimated. You are aware that Spirits possess tangible bodies. Tangibility implies substantiality, and substance is a more or less close impact of finer or coarser atoms. The seminal substances and all ovaria are aggregations of atoms, to a degree impressed by the personality of such creatures as may possess them. We will imagine a father addicted to drunkenness, or continually under the influence of narcotics. In such case the seminal substance being impressed or impregnated by alcoholic or narcotic atoms, the germ of a new being must, from the moment of conception, possess a bias toward alcoholism or narcotism. The mother may be of a superior type of woman, but, through association with the father of her unborn child, her mental emotions, which are substantial, are reflected or impressed upon its organism, and if she is not strong enough spiritually to equalize the influences of her environment, she almost certainly will give birth to a being accursed, poisoned, if you will, through the vicious habit of its father.