, and suffer peculiarly under the contact or care of some persons.

Other physicians, beside myself, can vouch that the presence of some
persons affected her as a pabulum vitae, while, if left with certain
others or alone, she was sure to grow weaker.

From the air, too, she seemed to draw a peculiar ethereal nourishment of
the same sort; she could not remain without an open window in the
severest cold of winter.[1]

[Footnote 1: Near us, this last winter, a person who suffered, and
finally died, from spasms like those of the Seherin,
also found relief from having the windows open, while
the cold occasioned great suffering to his attendants.]

The spirit of things, about which we have no perception, was sensible to
her, and had influence on her; she showed this sense of the spirit of
metals, plants, animals, and men. Imponderable existences, such as the
various colors of the ray, showed distinct influences upon her. The
electric fluid was visible and sensible to her when it was not to us.
Yea! what is incredible! even the written words of men she could
discriminate by touch.[2]

[Footnote 2: Facts of the same kind are asserted of late among
ourselves, and believed, though "incredible."]

These experiments are detailed under their several heads in the book.

From her eyes flowed a peculiar spiritual light which impressed even
those who saw her for a very short time. She was in each relation more
spirit than human.

Should we compare her with anything human, we would say she was as one
detained at the moment of dissolution, betwixt life and death; and who
is better able to discern the affairs of the world that lies before,
than that behind him.

She was often in situations when one who had, like her, the power of
discerning spirits, would have seen her own free from the body, which at
all times enveloped it only as a light veil. She saw herself often out
of the body; saw herself double. She would say, "I seem out of myself,
hover above my body, and think of it as something apart from myself. But
it is not a pleasant feeling, because I still sympathize with my body.
If only my soul were bound more firmly to the nerve-spirit, it might be
bound more closely with the nerves themselves; but the bond of my
nerve-spirit is always becoming looser."

She makes a distinction between spirit as the pure intelligence; soul,
the ideal of this individ