My second patient was a man moribund from tuberculosis. He was on the bed about four hours and fifteen minutes under observation before death. The first four hours he lost weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce per hour. He had much slower respiration than the first case, which accounted for the difference in loss of weight from evaporation of perspiration and respiratory moisture.

The last fifteen minutes he had ceased to breathe but his facial muscles still moved convulsively, and then, coinciding with the last movement of the facial muscles, the beam dropped. The weight lost was found to be half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated the heart and found it stopped. I tried again and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty grains. In the eighteen minutes that elapsed between the time he ceased breathing until we were certain of death, there was a weight loss of one and a half ounces and fifty grains, compared with a loss of three ounces during a period of four hours, during which time the ordinary channels of loss were at work. No bowel movement took place. The bladder moved but the urine remained upon the bed and could not have evaporated enough through the thick bed clothing to have influenced the result.

The beam at the end of eighteen minutes of doubt was placed again with the end in slight contact with the upper bar and watched for forty minutes but no further loss place.

My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If placed at balance one-tenth of an ounce would lift the beam up close to the upper limiting bar another one-tenth ounce would bring it up and keep it in direct contact, then if the two-tenths were removed the beam would drop to the lower bar and then slowly oscillate till balance was reached again.

This patient was of a totally different temperament from the first, his death was very gradual, so that we had great doubt from the ordinary evidence to say just what moment he died.

My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a weight of half an ounce lost, coin cident with death, and an additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later.

In the fourth case, a woman dying of diabetic coma, unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work, and although at death the beam sunk so that it re quired from three-eighths to one-half ounce to bring it back to the point preceding death, yet I regard this test as of no value.

My fifth case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred exactly simultaneously with death but peculiarly on bringing the beam up again with weights and later removing them, the beam did not sink back to stay for fully fifteen minutes. It was impossible to account for the three-eighths of an ounce drop, it was so sudden and distinct, the beam hitting the lower bar with as great a noise as in the first case. Our scales in the case were very sensitively balanced.

My sixth and last case was not a fair test. The patient died almost within five minutes after being placed upon the bed and died while I was adjusting the beam.

In my communication to Dr. Hodgson I note that I have said there was no loss of weight. It should have been added that there was no loss of weight that we were justified in recording.

My notes taken at the time of experiment show a loss of one and one-half ounces but in addition it should have been said the experiment was so hurried, jarring of the scales had not wholly ceased and the apparent weight loss, one and one-half ounces, might have been due to accidental shifting of the sliding weight on the beam. This could not have been true of the other tests; no one of them was done hurriedly.

My sixth case I regard as of no value from this cause.

The same experiments were carried out on fifteen dogs, surrounded by every precaution to obtain accuracy and the results were uniformly negative; no loss of weight at death. A loss of weight takes place about 20 to 30 minutes after death which is due to the evaporation of the urine normally passed, and which is duplicated by evaporation of the same amount of water on the scales, every other condition being the same, e.g., temperature of the room, except the presence of the dog’s body.

The dogs experimented on weighed from I5 to 70 pounds and the scales with the total weight upon them were sensitive to one-sixteenth of an ounce. The tests on dogs were vitiated by the use of two drugs administered to secure the necessary quiet and freedom from struggle so necessary to keep the beam at balance.

The ideal test on dogs would be obtained in those dying from some disease that rendered them much exhausted and incapable of struggle. It was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness.

The net result of the experiments conducted on human beings is that a loss of substance occurs at death not accounted for by known channels of loss. Is it the soul substance ? It would seem to me to be so. According to our hypothesis such a substance is necessary to the assumption of continuing or persisting personality after bodily death, and here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the human body at death.