Dr James Le Fanu: 17 January
Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet around a fire at Christmas they start to tell ghost stories,’ stated the writer Jerome K Jerome more than a century ago. The Victorians in particular subscribed to the reality of the supernatural, with one in 10 of the 17,000 people, interviewed for the Census Of Hallucinations carried out in 1894, answering ‘Yes’ to the question, ‘Have you ever, when believing yourself to be completely awake, had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a living being or inanimate object, or of hearing a voice, which impression, as far as you could discover, was not due to an external physical cause?’
The census has long been considered a curiosity of little scientic merit, but Professor Tom Dening of Nottingham University takes the rather different view that ‘by the standards of the time its methods were well thought out’. He selects for special mention the evidence from the census of ‘death coincidences’ where people claim to have seen images of friends and relatives who they thought were alive and well, but whose ghostly appearance, it subsequently transpired, occurred at the moment of their death.
Thus, Mr Walker-Anderson, a Yorkshireman who had emigrated to Australia, described how on the evening of 17 November 1891 he saw the figure of his aunt, ‘Mrs P’, standing near the foot of his bed, looking older and stouter than when he had last seen her three years earlier. Her lips moved, although he heard no sound, but he seemed to catch that she meant ‘goodbye’.
In due course, the English newspapers for that week arrived by boat, and sure enough there was a death notice of his aunt who had indeed died on that date. Subsequent correspondence with his mother revealed that, taking into account the time difference between Melbourne and Greenwich, Aunt P had appeared in Australia ‘three hours after her death in England’.
There are 50 similar instances reported in the census, and the possibility that they all occurred coincidentally with the death of a friend or relative must be very small indeed.
Professor Dening emphasises the great care taken by those conducting the survey to avoid elements of bias and to seek independent confirmation of the reports. The results, he suggests, ‘challenge the notion that such hallucinations are necessarily pathological’, by which he must mean that ghostly apparitions are not always figments of the imagination.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a reader from Bath who is troubled by a constantly runny nose and ‘lots of sneezing’. This was initially associated with a mild headache, which has subsequently got a lot worse and is now ‘almost constant’.
The most obvious diagnosis is a sinus infection, but no doubt this possibility has already been considered. The further possibility would be some form of allergic rhinitis where the repetitive sneezing would have jolted the structures in the upper neck to cause a muscle spasm-induced headache. If so, then the combination of Beconase nasal spray, neck massage and muscle relaxants, such as diazepam, is likely to be of help.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
The census has long been considered a curiosity of little scientic merit, but Professor Tom Dening of Nottingham University takes the rather different view that ‘by the standards of the time its methods were well thought out’. He selects for special mention the evidence from the census of ‘death coincidences’ where people claim to have seen images of friends and relatives who they thought were alive and well, but whose ghostly appearance, it subsequently transpired, occurred at the moment of their death.
Thus, Mr Walker-Anderson, a Yorkshireman who had emigrated to Australia, described how on the evening of 17 November 1891 he saw the figure of his aunt, ‘Mrs P’, standing near the foot of his bed, looking older and stouter than when he had last seen her three years earlier. Her lips moved, although he heard no sound, but he seemed to catch that she meant ‘goodbye’.
In due course, the English newspapers for that week arrived by boat, and sure enough there was a death notice of his aunt who had indeed died on that date. Subsequent correspondence with his mother revealed that, taking into account the time difference between Melbourne and Greenwich, Aunt P had appeared in Australia ‘three hours after her death in England’.
There are 50 similar instances reported in the census, and the possibility that they all occurred coincidentally with the death of a friend or relative must be very small indeed.
Professor Dening emphasises the great care taken by those conducting the survey to avoid elements of bias and to seek independent confirmation of the reports. The results, he suggests, ‘challenge the notion that such hallucinations are necessarily pathological’, by which he must mean that ghostly apparitions are not always figments of the imagination.
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a reader from Bath who is troubled by a constantly runny nose and ‘lots of sneezing’. This was initially associated with a mild headache, which has subsequently got a lot worse and is now ‘almost constant’.
The most obvious diagnosis is a sinus infection, but no doubt this possibility has already been considered. The further possibility would be some form of allergic rhinitis where the repetitive sneezing would have jolted the structures in the upper neck to cause a muscle spasm-induced headache. If so, then the combination of Beconase nasal spray, neck massage and muscle relaxants, such as diazepam, is likely to be of help.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk