The soul of things; or, psychometric researches and discoveries

Boston: Walker, Wise and Company, 1866. Third edition, revised, 8vo, pp. 370, [2]; full brown pebbled cloth; cloth sunned, upper free endpaper perished, textblock shaken with a gathering nearly loose, some foxing, fair. Psychometry is a belief in the ability to extract supernatural information from contact with objects. Denton, a self-taught geologist, wrote first The soul of things (1863) then Our planet, its past and future (1869) supporting this idea and claiming one could see the source of a fossil or the creature from which it came simply by holding it in the hand. His first work is a series of "experiments" in which he and Elizabeth touch various (truncated) objects from around the world and describe the visions that result. Psychometry was meant to aid the archaeologist, the geologist, the doctor, and anyone else who needed information otherwise difficult to obtain. (Inventory #: 69626)