Almost fifty years ago an Episcopal Bishop remarked to Dr. Buchanan that when he touched brass, even in the night, when he could not know with what substance he came in contact, he at once felt a disagreeable influence and recognized an offensive metallic taste. Such experience had been common to a great number of persons, and frequently observed, but this time it was called to the attention of the right man. All the world for ages had seen bodies fall to the ground, and countless millions of eyes have seen the phenomenon with no more thought than the brute, until a falling apple drew the attention of Newton. Dr. Buchanan at once saw that there was a profound philosophy back of this fact which transcended the senses. He began a lengthy series of experiments, by which he discovered that it was by no means rare for persons to be affected by metallic and other substances. In a class of one hundred and thirty students at the Eclectic Medical College, forty-three were sensitive in greater or less degree. Medicines held in the hand without any knowledge of their properties, produced the same effect, varying only in degree as when taken into the stomach. By placing the hand, or merely coming into the atmosphere of a deceased person, the sensitive was able to locate and describe the disease. In this field Dr. Buchanan has stood almost alone, until recently M. Bourru and M. Burot of the Naval Medical School at Rochfort, have made extended experiments on the “action of medicines at a distance,” which is really another way of stating the facts observed by him a generation ago. They held the metals and drugs six inches or so from the back of the head of the patients and proved all that Dr. Buchanan claimed for his discovery. But the discoverer did not rest here; he went a step further and found that a letter or any article having been brought in contact with the person, when taken in the hand or placed on the forehead of one sufficiently sensitive, gave the character of its writer or owner. Repeated experiments, such as any one may make, prove beyond question that the sensitive can in this manner read the character of the writer from his writings, his state of health, better than the most intimate friend, or even the writer himself. It is a marvelous statement, but only marvelous in our not understanding its cause. When this is revealed, and mystery removed, the subject allies itself with other phenomena of mind, having their origin in impressibility.