The New Psychology (Homeopathic World)

Prof. Elmer Gates, of Washington, is one of the most active and brilliant of the new school of psychologists. The occasional insight he gives us into his work, the new world it opens to us, makes us impatient for the time when he shall be ready to give the results of his investigations in a more complete form to the public. In his recent experiments he shows that the ether which fills all the interstellar universe really consists of distinct particles, but these particles are as much smaller than a chemical atom as a chemical atom is smaller than the sun. In carrying out his experiment it became necessary to produce an absolute vacuum which had never been accomplished before. To produce this result the professor takes a tube of potash glass, which is so hard that it requires a much greater heat than any other kind to melt. He fills the tube with another sort of glass, which has a melting point 500º lower than that of the potash glass. The tube and its contents are then subjected to slow heating until the soft glass is sufficiently melted to enable it to be pulled out bodily part way from the tube of hard glass containing it. The space thus left is an absolute vacuum. There is not one particle of air or any other gas, and yet here is a quantity of absolutely pure ether composed, as he proceeds to show, of distinct particles. In this experiment a metal ball on the end of a platinum wire is fixed in place incidental to the process of creating a vacuum. A glass lens focuses the sun’s rays at a point near the ball. At the point of focus, owing to the sun’s energy, the particles of ether move about more rapidly and are farthest apart. Then the ball swings toward the point of less density. This it does every time. This the professor regards as proof that the ether which fills all space, and whose wave motions make light and transmit electrical energy from the sun, is a material substance and composed of particles thickly crowded together, but so minute that they penetrate through everything.

Prof. Gates’ laboratory, in which he is working out these problems of psycho-physical research, is filled with the most delicate instruments the human mind can conceive to accomplish his purpose. Fortunately for science there is no lack of money at his disposal, a wealthy friend having appropriated $25,000 a year to further the professor’s work, of which he is now only at the beginning. Prof. Gates has in contemplation a line of investigation which, if we are not mistaken, judging from the results already obtained, will place upon a firm foundation a science of therapeutics which will do much to harmonize the medical world and prolong human life—New York Medical Times