If anything can circumvent cunning, it is certainly cunning itself, and in this sense, it is entirely laudable when exerted in a proper cause. There is no doubt that strategy had to be used to induce this woman, conscious of her falsity, and schooled in subterfuges and evasions, to submit to a coldly scientific test. The challenge, however, came under such circumstances, public suspicion being so whetted by the fact that a woman had been discovered whose knee-joints possessed the peculiar quality of making sound, that it could not well be avoided, without it becoming generally known that the declination was a tacit confession of fraud. The doctors published very promptly the result of their preliminary examination, which was made without any special faculties being afforded them. They said: "Curiosity having led us to visit the rooms at the Phelps House, in which two females from Rochester, Mrs. Fish and Miss Fox, profess to exhibit striking manifestations from the spirit world, by means of which communion may be had with deceased friends, etc.; and having arrived at a physiological explanation of the phenomena, the correctness of which has been demonstrated in an instance which has since fallen under our observation, we have felt that a public statement is called for, which may, perhaps, serve to prevent a further waste of time, money and credulity (to say nothing of sentiment and philosophy) in connection with this so long successful imposition. "The explanation is reached almost by a logical necessity, on the application of a method of reasoning much resorted to in the diagnosis of diseases, namely, _the reasoning by exclusion_. "It was reached by this method prior to the demonstration which has subsequently occurred. "It is to be assumed, first, that the manifestations are not to be regarded as spiritual, provided they can be physically or physiologically accounted for. Immaterial agencies are not to be invoked until material agencies fail. We are thus to _exclude_ spiritual causation in this stage of the investigation. "Next, it is taken for granted that the 'rappings' are not produced by artificial contrivances about the persons of the females, which may be concealed by the dress. This hypothesis is excluded because it is understood that the females have been repeatedly and carefully examined by lady committees. "It is obvious that the 'rappings' are not caused by machinery attached to tables, doors, etc., for they are heard in different rooms, and in different parts of the same room in which the females are present, _but always near the spot where the females are stationed_. This mechanical hypothesis is then to be excluded. So much for the negative evidence, and now for what positively relates to the subject.