Didier Brothers, Alexis & Adolph (midnineteenth
century)
The best-known clairvoyants of the age of animal magnetism.
In hypnotic state they apparently could read closed
books, recover lost objects, play billiards blindfolded or cards
face downward, and achieved feats of traveling clairvoyance.
For Pierre Seguier, president of France, Alexis described his
room and mentioned that there was a handbell on the table.
The President found the description correct, but was unsure
about the bell. On arriving home he found, to his surprise, that
during his absence a handbell had been placed on his table.
Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology 5th Ed. Didier Brothers, Alexis & Adolph
415
In 1847, at the request of Marquise de Mirville, Robert
Houdin, the famous conjurer, paid two visits to the Didier
brothers. He drew a book from his pocket and asked Alexis to
read a line eight pages back at a certain height which he
marked by sticking in a pin. When Alexis did so correctly
Houdin signed a declaration I affirm that the above facts are
scrupulously accurate.
Lord Adare attended a sitting in the company of a Col.
Llewellyn on July 2, 1844. According to his notes, Alexis took
from the skeptical colonel a morocco case, placed it on his
stomach and said, The object is a hard substance, not white,
enclosed in something more white than itself; it is a bone from
a greater body; a human bone; yours. It has been separated and
cut so as to leave a flat side. Alexis opened the case, took out
a piece of bone wrapped in silver paper and said, The ball
struck here; it was an extraordinary ball in effect; you received
three separate injuries at the same moment; the bone was broken
in three pieces; you were wounded early in the day whilst
engaged in charging the enemy. He also described the dress
of the soldiers and was right in all respects.
Alexis Didier was always accompanied by his hypnotist Marcillet.
He never claimed assistance from spirits. His views are
outlined in Le Sommeil Magnétique expliqué par le somnambule
Alexis en état de lucidité (1856). His brother Adolph wrote Animal
Magnetism and Somnambulism (1856); Mesmerism and Its Healing
Power (1875), and Clairvoyance (1876).
A long series of experiments conducted by Dr. Edwin Lee
in 1849 at Brighton and Hastings is recorded in Lees Animal
Magnetism (1866). H. G. Atkinson also subjected the Didier
brothers gift to careful scrutiny. E. W. Cox noted
A party of experts was planned to test M. Alexis. We prepared
a packet containing a single word of twelve letters and
enclosed it in six envelopes of thick brown paper, each of which
we carefully sealed. Handing him this packet he placed it, not
before his eyes which were bound with handkerchiefs and wool,
but upon his forehead, and in three minutes and a half he
wrote the contents correctly, imitating the very handwriting.
The word was by arrangement placed in the first envelope by
a friend in a distant town, who was not informed of the object
and who did not inform us what the word was; and none of us
knew until the envelopes were opened and the word found to
be that which the Somnambule had written.
Frank Podmore reflects on Alexiss work in The Newer Spiritualism
(1910) Many of these feats are so precisely recorded
and so well authenticated that it is difficult to doubt their genuineness.
They stand on the same evidential level as many of the
similar incidents recorded in the Proceedings of the S.P.R. He
observed that Alexis was in an abnormal state of consciousness
during his performances, a conclusion he reached from reference
to the fact that as a rule, he did not speak the answers but
preferred to write them. From this he concluded that Alexis was
an automatic writer and that his feats of clairvoyance were genuine
and that they involved no conscious deception on his part.
Sources
Cox, E. W. What Am I A Popular Introduction to Mental Physiology
and Psychology. N.p., 1874.
