Providentia

William James and the Medium

“Medium Stands Test… Professors at University Fail to Discover Any Trickery in Woman’s Acts – She Has Never Been Educated, but Converses in Several Languages while in a Trance and Writes like an Expert.”

Eusapia Palladino was riding high in 1907 following a series of tests at the University of Naples which apparently confirmed her amazing skills as a medium.  The tests, which had been arranged by the Society for Psychical Research, were conducted by several professors at the University as well as members of the Society who were also amateur conjurers.   Though the investigators had actually caught Palladino cheating during some of the séances she conducted, they concluded that she had also produced genuine evidence for the supernatural as well.

The newspaper coverage of the tests was largely enthusiastic (and with virtually no mention of the cheating).  According to the Washington Post story on August 25, 1907,  Palladino was “an ignorant woman and is known to have received no education whatever.  Nevertheless, while in a trance she was able to converse in several modern languages and writes in each of them in script that is like copper plate.”   The story also described how she made tables levitate, move curtains, produce spirit touches, and receive messages from the beyond.    Aside from scant mention of  her failures in previous tests, the coverage she generally received tended to describe her as one of the wonders of the modern age.

So, who was Eusapia Palladino?  Though she was born to a peasant family in southern Italy in 1854 and received little formal education,  she was certainly not as “ignorant” as the newspapers would later claim.   Still, it's hard to get a handle on much of her early history since most of it comes from her own, decidedly biased, account of how she launched her career as Europe’s most famous medium. 

 According to Palladino, she first discovered her spiritual gifts when she was fourteen years of age.  Already an orphan (her mother died when she was born and her father when she was twelve), she was living with another family when she became the focus of poltergeist activity.   As she would later state, she had no interest in spiritualism and only participated in séances to please her host family and avoid being sent to a convent.   

Within a few years however, she became famous for her séances and the wide range of supernatural  activity that reportedly occurred when she was in a trance.   By 1888, she was being scientifically tested by various scientists, including eminent Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso.    It’s open to question as to how impartial these scientists really were and Eusapia’s own behaviour towards them may have played a role in their endorsement of her psychic gifts (some evidence suggests that she and Lombroso had a sexual relationship for a time).    

Despite being caught faking on numerous occasions, the circle of true believers  that  Palladino established seemed unable to see her as anything but a genuine psychic with amazing powers.  For decades, she toured Europe doing séances and being tested by celebrities and scientists alike.   In the many seances that she conducted across Europe, she would communicate with her spirit guide, John King, and display a range of impressive physical phenomena.  

Levitating tables was her specialty but she could also produce spirit hands and faces, play musical instruments without using her hands, make flowers and other objects appear out of thin air, and contact the dead. She was the talk of Europe in her day and was highly sought after (despite the enormous fees she charged).  Despite being caught faking numerous times,  the controversy over Palladino’s mediumship continued. Many genuine skeptics regarded her as a practiced fraud using a wide range of tricks that allowed her to fool many of the experts who tested her.  On the other side, there were the “open-minded” scientists such as Lombroso and Oliver Lodge who argued that there were enough unexplained  results to suggest that something supernatural was going on.

As for the times she was caught faking, Palladino and her manager explained this away as only occurring when her powers were not working at their best. This became more common as she grew older and her powers diminished (or skeptics began demanding tighter controls, your call).

It was only natural that she drew psychic researchers across Europe, including leading scientists such as Pierre and Marie Curie and Theodore Flournoy. Although she appeared to welcome attempts at scientific validation of her powers, researchers who dealt with her came to fear Palladino's volatile temper and frequent tantrums.  This was especially apparent during the  various attempts to control the conditions under which she conducted her seances. It was common for Palladino to storm out in a huff whenever things failed to go according to her expectations.

When she came to the United States in 1909, Palladino was in fine form with enthusiastic newspaper stories proclaiming the genuine nature of her powers.     Even on the steamer that brought her and her entourage across the Atlantic, she conducted three séances.  Cesare Lombroso had died that same year and she quickly took advantage of this by boasting that she was able to communicate with his spirit as well during the dozens of séances she conducted.

Among the observers who were apparently taken in by her tricks were magician Howard Thurston and Harvard philosopher, William James.   It was James (often called the “father of American psychology”) who become one of  her biggest supporters.   Already an ardent spiritualist, James was founding member of the American Society for Psychical Research and the author of various highly-respected works on religion and mysticism.   He had previously endorsed the mediumship skills of American medium  Leonora Piper by insisting that she knew details about his dead son William that she could not possibly have known.  Though later biographers have suggested ways that Piper could have gained  this information, the endorsement of someone like William James was considered powerful evidence in itself.

And then there was Hugo Munsterberg,  also of Harvard University.  Though it had been James who had first hired Munsterberg to run the psychological laboratory he had founded, they frequently clashed over Munsterberg’s persistent skepticism about spiritualism.   By 1909, James and Munsterberg were locked in a war of words over mediums such as Palladino.  James frequently accused Munsterberg of being overly analytical in rejecting supernatural explanations while Munsterberg in turn accused James of being naive.

After attending a number of seances, Munsterburg came to viewed Palladino as an alarming example of fraud masquerading as science. He wrote that Palladino was "a great artist, and as a vaudeville show she might be at the head of her profession, but I do not see how she can overcome in any cool observer, the feeling that it is trickery". It was during her American tour in 1909 when he attended a seance with Palladino and a "well-known scientist" (not named, but probably James).

During the seance, he sat on Palladino's left side and his companion on her right holding her hands and feet when the table behind them was supposed to move. Suddenly, there was a "wildly yelling scream". What Palladino did not know was that Munsterberg had arranged for an agent to slip in unobserved and to lie flat on the floor behind them to block any attempts at trickery. It turned out that she had slipped her foot out of her shoe and "with an athletic backward movement of the leg was reaching out and fishing with her toes" when the agent grabbed her foot (hence the scream).

Munsterberg was in his glory having caught Palladino in blatant fraud and many of his contemporaries viewed it as a refutation of James' views on psychic phenomena. As Josiah Royce later put it:  Eeny meeny, miny mo/Catch Eusapia by the toe/If she hollers, then we know/That James' doctrine isn't so.

Suffice it to say, James was not amused (although he acknowledged the fraud) and by the time of his death in the following year, he and Munsterberg were largely estranged. While Palladino had been caught in fraud before, this latest revelation seemed to put the final nail in her coffin and her career never really recovered.  Munsterberg's own abrupt death in 1916 put an end to his remarkable career as a psychologist and scientist and, while not as well known as other "ghostbusters" such as Harry Houdini,  his legacy of skepticism lives on.

 

The Home of Truth and the Divine Typewriter

Today, Home of Truth, Utah is nothing more than a ghost town located in southeastern Utah just twenty-four miles south of Monticello.  Visitors traveling to the Needles district of Canyonlands National Park near the town of Moab may occasionally stop and view the remains of the town but there seems little trace of the controversial community that had been there during the 1930s.

When Spiritualist Marie Ogden settled on the town (which was originally called Dry Valley) as the new headquarters for her community of followers to live in, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns likely had no idea what was coming next.   She had developed a serious interest in Spiritualism following the death of her husband in 1929 and later established a School of Truth in collaboration with fellow Spiritualist William Dudley Pelley.  

Pelley, who was a hardline political extremist as well as a spiritualist, had developed a national organization based on his fears that Jews and Communists would eventually take over the world.  Following a “near-death” experience in 1928, Pelley declared a mission to "spiritually transform America".   With the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis in Germany, Pelley founded his own “Silver Legion” advocating many of their same anti-Semitic policies in the United States.  He would later run for President as part of the Christian Party.

All of this was too much for Marie Ogden and she decided to move her followers to Utah and the town that she rechristened “Home of Truth”.    Most of these followers came from Idaho where she had lived and done most of her lecturing before splitting with Pelley and relocating to Utah.   As part of her spiritualist message, she claimed that her typewriter received messages that relayed God’s will.  These divine messages inspired her to travel across the country establishing lecture groups and raising awareness of her mission.   It was the typewriter that reportedly directed her to Dry Valley which was declared to be the “axis of the Earth” and that she should establish her “home of truth” there.    Part of the appeal of the site was that it was near Church Rock which Ogden believed would be where Christ’s Second Coming would occur.

Any follower willing to relocate to the new community had to follow Ogden’s strict instructions.  That included renouncing any personal goods, becoming quasi-vegetarians, abstaining from tobacco and alcohol, and pledging absolute obedience to the “word” from Marie Ogden’s typewriter.   In a move that she likely learned from William Pelley, Marie Ogden also purchased the only newspaper in the county which acted as the main source of news for people in her community.    Throughout the 1930s, Home of Truth continued to attract followers and had as many as 100 people at its height in 1935.

The new community was set up along strictly communal lines, with three groups of buildings.  The Outer Portal included the dormitory and communal house while the largely uncompleted Middle Portal was to include the chapel made of cobblestones.  At the centre of the complex was the Inner Portal where Ogden lived with her daughter.  The Inner Portal also featured the divine typewriter that relayed God’s word on a daily basis and located on the exact axis of the world (no, I don’t know what that means either).   The dominant theme of the messages was that the last days were at hand and only the true believers at the Inner Portal would be spared. 

Along with revelations from her typewriter, Ogden also made regular trips to nearby Shay Mountain where she communed with God on a regular basis.   Her teachings came from a variety of sources including works of theosophy as well as doctrines such as reincarnation and communication with the dead.    Not only did she claim to be the reincarnated Virgin Mary but that many of her followers were reincarnations of various famous religious figures as well (including Brigham Young).   She also maintained sole financial control over the community although she allowed some of her male followers to hire themselves out as labourers to nearby farms.  

Though the Mormons in the surrounding communities were a little curious over what was happening in Marie Ogden’s Home of Truth, they were not particularly alarmed.   At first.   The newspaper she purchased was largely the same as ever except for her own prominent column titled, “Our Corner” which featured her unique take on metaphysics and reality.    Things began to change on February 11, 1935 with the death of one of her followers, Edith Peshak.

Peshak, who had been suffering from terminal cancer, had joined Marie Ogden’s community after being assured that her life could be saved if she embraced Ogden’s spiritualist beliefs.  Even after  Peshak died,  Ogden insisted that she was still receiving messages from her dead follower who was not really dead but “only in a state of purification” and would soon return to life.   To prepare for the resurrection, the body was washed three times a day and carefully tended, including feeding (don’t ask).   All of these details were lovingly presented in a new feature in her paper titled, “Rebirth of a Soul”.

While the surrounding Mormon communities had been accommodating up to then, this new preoccupation was a bit too much for them.  Sheriff Lawrence S. Palmer brought in a medical doctor and a nurse to examine the body to ensure that no sanitary laws were being violated.   Since the body was well-preserved, they could not force a burial but things went downhill for Marie Ogden’s community after that.

By February 1937, only a dozen of Marie Ogden’s original settlers were left (unless you count Edith Peshak).   It was then that Ogden received a new message stating that Peshak was about to return to life.   That was enough for authorities to return to Home of Truth and demand that a death certificate be filled out and that Edith Peshak be officially buried.   When Ogden refused despite being arrested (since Peshak was not really dead), police officers searched for the body but failed to find anything.  

The investigation only ended when another of Ogden’s followers, Tommy Robertson, admitted that he had cremated the body on Marie Ogden’s instructions.   The cremation had occurred shortly after the previous investigation despite Ogden’s insistence that the body was being preserved to prepare for Peshak’s resurrection.  This public revelation put the final nail in Marie Ogden’s dream and only a handful of her followers remained in Home of Truth after that. 

Though Home of Truth was largely a ghost town by then, Marie Ogden managed to struggle on until illness forced her into a nursing home.   She died on March 4, 1975 and the contents of her Inner Portal were sold at auction two years later.  No word on what happened to her divine typewriter...

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Storming the Ark

Predicting the end of the world is never easy.

At least, that's what Johannes Stoeffler quickly came to realize.  Born in 1452 in which is now Germany, Stoeffler excelled as a scholar and later established himself as the parish priest for his native town of Justingen.   In addition to his religious duties, Stoeffler became famous for his learning in such diverse fields as astronomy, mathematics and astrology as well as designing and constructing complex astronomical instruments, clocks, and orreries.  He also wrote a manual on the construction and use of the astrolabe and corresponded regularly with some of the leading intellectuals of the 15th century. 

And so, when Stoeffler confidently predicted in 1499 that a universal flood would cover the world on February 24, 1524, people paid attention.   He based this prediction on the various planetary conjunctions that would happen in that year.  While only six planets were known at the time, almost all of them (including the sun) would be in conjunction in the constellation of Pisces and, given that this was the sign of the fish,  it surely meant that the world would be drowned.  While he was hardly the only doomsday prophet of his time, he was certainly the most prominent.  By 1507, Stoeffler occupied the first-ever chair of astronomy and mathematics at the University of Tubingen and was eventually elected rector in 1522. 

As the dreaded prophecy date drew closer, more and more people heard about the prediction.  Not only was Stoeffler a respected academic, but he was also an advisor to royalty which made him a credible source.  More than one hundred pamphlets were written about the impending catastrophe and the panic set in.  Property in valleys, along river banks, or on the sea coastline was sold at a loss (the fact that there were still willing buyers didn't seem to reassure anyone).  Although some skeptics suggested that the planetary conjunction wouldn't be as fatal as predicted,  the fear of impending doom still persisted.  English astrologers, not wanting to be upstaged by their European counterparts, announced that the universal deluge would occur on February 1, 1524 (and the first rainfall would occur in London, of course). 

While 1524 proved to be an unusually dry year, the preparations for a flood continued.  In London, true believers built an elevated fortress at the Priory Church of St. Bartholomew the Great and equipped it with two months worth of provisions. On February 1, more than twenty-thousand Londoners abandoned their homes and gathered on surrounding hillsides to wait for the rain to come.   When the predicted universal deluge proved to be a wash (sorry, couldn't resist), everyone just went home again.  To cover their embarrassment, English astrologers announced that their calculations were out by one hundred years and that February 1, 1624 was the true date for the Apocalypse.

In continental Europe, meanwhile, February 24 drew closer and preparations continued despite the debacle in England.  Boat builders became rich as landowners and nobles prepared emergency arks for their own survival.  Local merchants also played up the Apocalypse angle by stocking their shelves with a variety of emergency supplies and prepared to do brisk business.  River banks across Europe were dotted with new boats laden with all the food and water they could safely carry.

Of the various known arks to be built, the most ambitious was by a German count named von Iggleheim who constructed a luxury, three-story ark for his friends and family.   At the crack of dawn on February 24, von Iggleheim boarded his ark and had his servants drag assorted supplies up the gangplank.   Crowds had gathered, mostly out of curiosity, although some of them were having fun at von Iggleheim's expense.  The jeering stopped when the rain started however.  While it wasn't a particularly impressive rainstorm as such, it was enough to panic the crowd.  Hundreds were killed in the stampede that followed and then they turned their attention to von Iggleheim's ark and the other ships nearby. When von Iggleheim refused to allow any of them aboard, he was dragged off his ship and stoned to death by the crowd.   The panic only ended when the rain stopped (though the corpses still remained).

When 1524 eventually proved to be one of the driest years on record, Johannes Stoeffler shamefacedly revised his calculations and concluded that the Great Flood would come in 1528.  This time aro0und though, nobody really took notice and the new date passed without incident.  He died in 1531 (of plague, not drowning) and is mainly remembered for his accomplishments in astronomy and mathematics.  

Stoeffler's example hardly stopped new predictions of apocalypse however.    During the 17th century,  astrologer and Rosicrucian Johann Jacob Zimmerman became famous for announcing that the Apocalypse would occur in the fall of 1694 and that the Pennsylvania wilderness would be the best place to observe the world's end.  With forty fellow enthusiasts, he made arrangements with the Governor of Pennsylvania to build a small settlement which he named the "Society of the Women of the Wilderness" (despite the fact that most of his followers were men).  The proposed settlement would allow Zimmerman's followers to live a utopian existence of quiet contemplation while waiting for the end.  Sadly, Zimmerman died unexpectedly before he could accompany his supporters as they left Rotterdam.  The planned community went ahead under the leadership of Zimmerman's second-in-command, Johannes Kelpius.    The settlement, near what is now Wissahickon Creek, Pennsylvania, is still the stuff of local legend and managed to survive the non-ending of the world in 1694.  The settlement only dissolved with Kelpius' death fourteen years later.  

Although you would think that people would have become leery of apocalyptic prophecies after a while, that never seems to happen.  Virtually every new generation seems to spawn another prophet of doom proclaiming the imminent end of the world.    Even Isaac Newton wrote a treatise offering his own estimation of when the world would end (it was published after his death).  Famous prophets of the 18th and 19th century included such notables as  Joanna Southcott with her box of prophecies and  Mary Bateman with her Hen of Doom.  Well into the 20th century, apocalyptic prophecies continued to be announced linked to spirit messages and/or celestial signs.  Now that the dreaded 2012 date has come and gone, it is only a matter of time until yet another apocalypse craze comes along.

 

Astra-Zeneca Panic Leads to Bizarre Symptom Reports

Despite early reports concerning the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine codeveloped by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the news that many European countries have suspended or delayed rollouts due to safety concerns.    While only a handful of cases of patients experiencing blood clots after receiving the vaccine have been reported,   widespread panic among potential vaccine users has led to many either refusing the vaccine or else reporting  symptoms that seem more due to placebo effects than actual side effects.   

In the United Kingdom, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) routinely monitors potential side effects of new medications and vaccines through Yellow Card reports submitted by medical doctors, health agencies, and by members of the public.  Common reactions such as headaches, fevers and muscle pains which typically go away on their own continue to be reported in up to ten percent of users while more serious symptoms, including blood clots, sepsis, and stroke have yet to be associated with vaccine use.  Along with these documented side effects, people who have been vaccinated are also reporting significant changes in their lives despite no real evidence that they are vaccine-related.   This includes forty-five reports of post-vaccination crying or screaming, four reports of eyes changing colour, seven reports of either growing or losing teeth,  thirty-nine people reporting losing weight after the vaccine (and three saying they've gained weight).   More common symptoms include flatulence (102 reports) or simply "feeling abnormal" (558 reports).  And some reports are even more bizarre, including two reporting post-vaccination retirement, five blaming the vaccine for being bitten or stung by an insect, one blaming the vaccine for becoming a smoker, and another implicating the vaccine in a failure to stick to a diet.  

A statement released by the MHRA addresses many of these unusual reports.  "'The Yellow Card scheme is a mechanism by which anybody can voluntarily report any suspected adverse reactions or side effects to the vaccine. 'It is very important to note that a Yellow Card report does not necessarily mean the vaccine caused that reaction or event. 'We ask for any suspicions to be reported, even if the reporter isn’t sure if it was caused by the vaccine. Reports to the scheme are known as suspected adverse reactions (ADRs). Many suspected ADRs reported on a Yellow Card do not have any relation to the vaccine or medicine and it is often coincidental that they both occurred around the same time.  The reports are continually reviewed to detect possible new side effects that may require regulatory action, and to differentiate these from things that would have happened regardless of the vaccine or medicine being administered, for instance due to underlying or undiagnosed illness. It is therefore important that the suspected ADRs described in this report are not interpreted as being proven side effects of Covid-19 vaccines.'

While health agencies have since concluded that there is no evidence of the AstraZeneca vaccine causing blood clots or other adverse reactions, at least one country, Denmark, is maintaining the rollout ban, at least for now.   It will likely be a while before the AstraZeneca vaccine becomes as widely trusted as its less controversial alternatives.

 

The Xhosa Prophecy

How dangerous can a prophecy be?  And what happens to a prophet who turns out to be wrong?  The story of Nongqawuse and the prophecy that led to the deaths of thousands of her fellow Xhosa in the mid-19^th century is an important chapter in the history of skepticism despite being so little known outside of South Africa.

Even in the early days of British colonialism in southern Africa, the various tribes that made up the Xhosa nation were one of the largest ethnic groups in what would eventually become the Eastern Cape Province of the Republic of South Africa.   Though apartheid policies still lay in the future, the Xhosa were largely shut out of most businesses and depended on their cattle herds and crops for food and trade.  Despite a major outbreak of cattle lung sickness that had struck the Xhosa cattle herds between 1855 and 1856, the economic disaster that would devastate Xhosa society came from another direction entirely.

According to historical records, the Xhosa girl at the centre of the crisis that would follow is believed to have been born in 1840.   After losing both of her parents at an early age, Nongqawuse was raised by her uncle , Mhlakaza, a prominent spiritualist, and her childhood appeared otherwise normal .   

Everything changed in the spring of 1856 when Nongqawuse and her friend Nombada went to fetch water from a nearby river.    After returning,  the fifteen-year old Nongqawuse told her uncle that she had met the spirits of two of her ancestors who were using her to relay an important prophecy to her people.   The prophecy instructed them to destroy their crops and kill their cattle as a sacrifice to the ancestors who would rise up and drive all the white settlers from the sea.    After the settlers were gone, the sun would turn red and a new golden age would come for the Xhosa.  

There was already racial tension brewing among the Xhosa, who blamed the British for the lung infections that kept decimating their herds.   At the same time,  their food crops had been hit by a new infection that killed the corn before it ripened.  Believing the infections were caused by witchcraft,  the Xhosa turned to traditional remedies as a way of saving themselves.    Prophets and healers offering miraculous cures became commonplace although none of them would have the impact of  Nongqawuse and her prophecies.  

Whatever her reason for making the prophecy (and who inspired her to make it),  Nongqawuse’s strange message likely would not have gone much further without her uncle’s endorsement.   While the two girls were ridiculed at first, they went back a few days later and claimed to have received the same message.  When her uncle went with them, he reportedly saw nothing though his niece relayed the message from the spirits to him.    Convinced that his niece’s message was genuine, Mhlakaza dedicated himself to the prophecy and even began killing his own cattle.  

Eventually, he managed to persuade the local chief, Sarili ka Hintsa, about the coming golden age.   The prospect of eliminating the white settlers who were already taking all the best land was definitely appealing and Mhlakaza’s reputation helped as well.    There was also considerable anger about the recent defeat that the Xhosa had experienced during a frontier war that had ended just three years earlier.    Along with that humiliating defeat, the growing culture clash between the European settlers and the Xhosa contributed to a tense situation.  Sarili decided to set an example for his people by killing his own cattle and destroying his crops.  Though likely horrified at the potential for disaster, his subjects had little choice but to follow that example.  

And so, in 1856, the Great Cattle Killing began.   During the thirteen months that followed, hundreds of thousands of cattle were killed and all the crops were burnt.    Though approximately 15% of the 70,000 Xhosa living in the Eastern Cape at the time refused to take part, they were largely condemned by the ones who did.   A common nickname attached to them was amagogotoya (stingy ones).   Nongqawuse continued hearing the “voices” of the ancestors telling her that all of the cattle needed to be destroyed since they were tainted by the Europeans.   As for the British settlers themselves, they watched the cattle killing helplessly (and some historians suggest that they quietly encouraged it).   Though one prominent missionary, Charles Brownlee, tried to counter Nongqawuse’s prophecy, he was largely ignored.

Acting as his niece’s spokesman, Mhlakaza took the bold step of providing a specific date for when the prophecy would be fulfilled (Nongqawuse  had been carefully vague up to that time).   According to Mhlakaza,  the ancestors’ promise would be fulfilled on the first day of the full moon.  He assured them that the sun would turn red and the believers would be rewarded for their faith.   Not only would all the cattle be replaced by new cattle more beautiful than ever, but new fields of crops ready to harvest would appear as well.   The dead warriors would all come back to life and a new era of youth and beauty would begin. 

When the full moon came and went with the sun being the same colour as ever,   Mhlakaza managed to provide a new date for the prophecy, this time on the first day of the new moon.    To ensure that people believed in the prophecy, Mhlakaza even organized demonstrations where he would point out to the sea and show them the heads of the New People bobbing out of the water (he was the only one who could hear their message).   Some believers even claimed to hear the invisible cattle and goats.  As each date failed, he and Nongqawuse tried to place the blame on the nonbelievers who had refused to destroy their cattle and crops.   Finally, after repeated failures,  Mhlakaza set a final date of February 18, 1857 when the ancestors would definitely appear. 

After that date came and went,  Sarili and his subjects had completely run out of patience though the Xhosa who had destroyed their cattle and crops had much bigger problems by then.   With the loss of their main source of food,  they had no way of avoiding mass starvation.   For all that Sarili and Mhlakaza shared most of the blame for the coming catastrophe, Sarili insisted on laying all the blame on Nongqawuse.  

Knowing that she would likely be killed if she remained, Nongqawuse fled to the British for safety and they placed her in protective custody on Robben Island.  She would stay there for years before being quietly released.  In the meantime,  mass starvation set in among the Xhosa with over 40,000 deaths and thousands more being forced to leave their ancestral lands to find work in the nearby Cape Colony.   According to some accounts, thousands of vultures could be seen overhead as they were drawn to the countless human and animal corpses.   There were also documented cases of some Xhosa turning to cannibalism.

The British colony governor,  Sir George Grey, took full advantage of the mass starvation.  Though he had warned Sarili against the cattle killing and also provided food to the starving Xhosa afterward, it was hardly enough to avoid the mass starvation that would last for years.   As the refugees began flooding into the Colony, Grey ordered the colonists not to offer any help to the starving Xhosa unless they agreed to sign binding labour contracts.   He also imprisoned many of the Xhosa chiefs on the pretext that they were planning war against the colonists.    The total population of Xhosa living in the Eastern Cape dropped and the Governor eventually seized much of their land to be used by European settlers.  More than 600,000 acres of land fell into British hands as a result of Grey’s actions. 

While Nongqawuse  survived,  her uncle was one of the casualties and much of the blame for what happened fell on her.    No reliable details of her later life are available but she was believed to have changed her name after her release from custody and moved far away from the village where she had lived to avoid being killed.   She is believed to have died in 1898 though details about her later life are scarce.  

The Xhosa prophecy and the resulting famine is one of the most horrifying examples of mass hysteria in the past two centuries.  It is also a graphic example of the devastating power of belief when it is allowed to override common sense.

Debunking the "Miracle Cure"

The popular name for it is the "Dhammika Paniya."

When self-proclaimed healer Dhammika Bandara announced late last year that he had discovered an herbal remedy that would not only cure COVID-19 but also provide lifelong immunity to the disease, he became an overnight sensation in Sri Lanka. According to   Bandara, he learned how to create his life-giving syrup from a dream in which the goddess Kali appeared to him and told him how to "save the world."    Though all the ingredients remain a mystery, social media suggests that most of them, including honey and nutmeg, can be found in any household.

While cases of COVID-19 had been relatively stable in Sri Lanka for most of 2020, the number of new infections began rising sharply in October.   According to World Health Organization statistics, known coronavirus cases had risen from 3,380 with 13 deaths in early October to 22,988 with 109 deaths by the end of November (latest statistics put it close to 90,000). As a result, COVID anxiety rose to an all-time high in Sri Lanka and left the public strongly receptive to Bandara's claims.

Despite being hailed as an "ayurvedic physician" by his supporters,  there was no real evidence that the one-time stonemason had any actually training in medicine, something that mainstream medical practitioners and ayurvedic healers were quick to point out.  Despite warnings about  Bandara's wonder elixir (which has been officially classified as a food supplement), demand rose sharply when Sri Lanka's Health Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi openly endorsed him and was even photographed sipping a spoonful of his elixir.  Numerous other government legislators did the same.

All of which led to thousands of Sri Lankans flocking to Kegalle, the town where Bandara lives, while ignoring the country’s social distancing regimen to get their own supply of the elixir.  How many of these miracle seekers ended up being infected as a result of their enthusiasm may never be known.

Granted, Bandara isn't the first miracle worker that Wanniarachchi endorsed.  In November, she dropped a pot of “miracle water” into the country's Kalu river after another self-styled prophet, Eliyantha White, promised that the water he blessed could end the spread of the virus across the country.  She was so confident in this claim that she publicly pulled off her mask after the pot ceremony and insisted she she and her security details would be protected.

Which has led to considerable embarrassment given that Wanniarachchi has recently been diagnosed with coronavirus herself and has since gone into isolation, along with several other government figures who had also endorsed Bandara's elixir.  Even as  the government continues its drive to immunize the country's population,  the suspicion that many people in Sri Lanka have towards Western medicine will likely do little to discourage the quest for miracle cures.

As for Bandara himself, he is dealing with his own legal woes as he faces assault charges after allegedly attacking a doctor who dared to argue with him at his Kegalle home.  Police are still investigating.

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Alfred Russel Wallace and The Medium

Among London’s spiritualists during the late 19^th century, the undisputed queen had to have been Lizzie Nichol Guppy.

Born Agnes Nichol (although she preferred to be called Lizzie when she became an adult) , she would later claim to have been linked to the spirit world all her life (possibly due to being  orphaned as an infant).    After seeing her first spirit at the age of nine, Lizzie found herself besieged by ghosts and quickly became known to a widening circle of friends and admirers  due to her talent as a physical medium.   Along with seeing ghosts, she also became well-known for being able to “apport” physical objects such as fresh flowers and fruit.  Her career began in 1866 when she first apported flowers at a séance attended by various spiritualists who gravely testified that her mediumship abilities were real.   One of the ones attending, whose reputation as a scientist was unimpeachable, was the great biologist (and scientific heretic) Alfred Russel Wallace.

While Wallace was famous for being a co-discoverer of evolution, his fondness for, ahem, unconventional scientific views is not so well-known.   Along  with being an early opponent of vaccination (and lending considerable scientific legitimacy to the anti-vaccination movement as a result) Alfred Russel Wallace was also an ardent phrenologist and spiritualist.    After being introduced to spiritualism in 1865, Wallace began attending séances regularly and this was where he first met Lizzie Nichol.   Though Wallace always considered himself to be a skeptical man of science, he was still heavily influenced by his favourite sister, Fanny Sims, who was an enthusiastic spiritualist.

Not that he and his sister were the only ones dabbling in spiritualism at the time.   From its strange beginnings with the Fox sisters in the 1840s, the spiritualist movement had gained serious respectability on both sides of the Atlantic by the time  Wallace took an interest.   At the height of spiritualism’s popularity, the movement claimed more than 10 million supporters with more than one hundred spiritualist societies around the world.  Even the French court of Napoleon III was conducting spiritualist séances and public mediums such as Arthur Slade and Lizzie Nichol were the darlings of society wherever they travelled. 

For Lizzie Nichol (who became Lizzie Guppy in 1867 when she married her husband Samuel), life was especially good.   Not only was her husband a wealthy man, but she and Samuel traveled the Continent while astounding people with the séances she conducted.  Along with the usual flowers and fruit materialized on request, Lizzie and Samuel also regaled séance-goers with showers of butterflies, snow, and feathers coming down from the ceiling.   When Princess Margaret of Orleans asked for a prickly cactus, Lizzie arranged for twenty of them to fall from the ceiling during one séance in France.   Lizzie was also trained as a mesmerist and healer (Mesmerism was all the rage at the time as well) and even established an “apport post” where personal items could be “mailed” from one house to another using her supernatural abilities.  

The most notorious episode of Lizzie Guppy’s career happened in June of 1871 when Lizzie was supposedly teleported across London unexpectedly after being “summoned” by two of her protégés during a séance.  As Lizzie would later claim, she was writing household accounts in her home when she “instantly precipitated from her home” and landed three miles away where she “came down bump in the middle of a séance –dressed only in her underclothes.”    Eight people reportedly witnessed this episode which the newspapers reported (with only a slight grain of salt).

Working with her husband, Lizzie took advantage of the then-new science of photography to create some of the very first “spirit photographs” and they recruited Alfred Russel Wallace to lend his scientific reputation to  boost their credibility.    On March 14, 1874, Wallace went with Lizzie Guppy to a professional photographer’s studio where he posed to have a photograph taken.   During previous séances with Lizzie, Wallace had received spirit messages from his deceased brother William and had fully expected to see William’s ghost in the picture with him.  Instead, Wallace was astonished to see a female figure holding flowers in two of the three photographs taken (which he personally watched being prepared and developed).   He concluded that the woman looked like his mother (despite the fact that she was still living at the time).   

Convinced that the spirit photographs were genuine, Wallace would later write that “I see no escape from the conclusion that some spiritual being, acquainted with my mother's various aspects during life, produced these recognizable impressions on the plate. That she herself still lives and produced these figures may not be proved; but it is a more simple and natural explanation to think that she did so, than to suppose that we are surrounded by beings who carry out an elaborate series of impostures for no other apparent purpose than to dupe us into a belief in a continued existence after death.”

As all this was happening, Wallace’s son Bertie became severely ill with scarlet fever.  Giving up  on conventional medicine (which had little to offer at the time, to be fair), Wallace decided to try alternative medicine.  And this actually seemed to work, at first.   Bertie improved briefly but then suddenly died on April 24, 1874, just before his seventh birthday.   Devastated by his son's death, Wallace placed all of the blame on conventional medicine and argued that his son might have lived if he had started the alternative treatment sooner.

While he could never talk about Bertie again (in his later autobiography, he would state that he had two children instead of three), his faith in spiritualism seemed stronger than ever.    In that same dark year, Wallace published A Defence of Modern Spiritualism in the Fortnightly Review.  Despite the controversy over spiritualism, Wallace’s article would become one of his most republished ever.   The article was intended to be a defense against the various attacks on spiritualism by arch-skeptic, William Benjamin Carpenter.

While Wallace and Carpenter were both fellow scientists (and former friends before the spiritualist movement split them), Carpenter had a very different view of what was happening in the seances that Wallace attended.   Not only did Carpenter argue that spiritualism was a fraud, he even went so far as to question the scientific judgement of its supporters, including Wallace and Sir William Crookes.   While Wallace’s article was intended to prove that spiritualism was real, it alsoreflected the anger that he felt towards Carpenter and the other skeptics and mainly focused on the idea that men of science could not be fooled.   As he would sternly point out in his article:

Now what do our leaders of public opinion say when a scientific man of proved ability again observes a large portion of the more extraordinary phenomena, in his own house, under test conditions, and affirms their objective reality, and this not after a hasty examination, but after four years of research? Men [with heavy scientific appendages to their names] refuse to examine them when invited; the eminent in the society of which he is a fellow refuses to record them; and the press cries out that it wants better witnesses than Mr. Crookes, and that such facts want [confirmation] before they can be believed?

In other words, spirit phenomena were true and needed no further proof.  He also linked spiritualism to his other passion for phrenology and argued that spiritualism represented a way of linking all mankind into a universal brotherhood.

Despite this passionate defense, Wallace’s article read more like a religious tract than the work of a respected scientist.   The article  helped alienate Wallace from most of his fellow scientists (especially since it was basically a declaration of war against scientific materialism).   He was also notorious for defending mediums such as Lizzie Guppy and Arthur Slade, even after some of them were caught in blatant fraud, by using his scientific reputation to give them added respectability.

Unfortunately for Wallace, his public defense of spiritualism and his scathing attacks on skeptics severely damaged his scientific reputation.  It also drove a wedge between him and his colleagues, including Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, and others, all of whom thought Wallace was far too gullible.    Not only was Wallace targeted by arch-skeptics such as Carpenter, he was also strongly criticized in professional journals.   The medical journal, the Lancet, was especially harsh (largely because of Wallace’s anti-vaccination crusade) and he faced similar abuse for the rest of his life.    Even when Charles Darwin later tried to get a pension for Wallace (who had lifelong financial problems), many of his fellow-scientists cited Wallace’s spiritualism and other anti-science beliefs to resist helping him (they eventually reconsidered, though).   

By the time of Wallace’s death in 1911, spiritualism had largely lost its appeal and the 1870s represented the peak of the spiritualism craze in most countries.  Mediums such as Lizzie Guppy faded into obscurity as more prominent mediums came on the scene and professional debunkers became more successful in catching mediums committing fraud.  To his dying day however, Wallace stayed loyal to spiritualism and his scientific reputation was still strong enough to win new converts to the cause.

While Alfred Russel Wallace continues to be remembered as one of the discoverers of the evolution, his less popular crusades have been largely overlooked.  If nothing else, the strange fascination he had with spiritualism should serve as a reminder that even supposedly hardheaded scientists can get into trouble when dabbling in areas outside their own expertise.

Dowsing For Murder

It began with a brutal double murder on July 5, 1692 when  a wine merchant and his wife were killed in the cellar of their shop in Lyons, France.   Since the money known to be in the shop was missing, authorities concluded that the couple had been robbed and murdered using the bloody billhook that had been left behind.  Unfortunately, forensic science was virtually non-existent at the time and the magistrates had no idea about who might have committed the crime.

Rather than letting the crime remain unsolved however, the magistrates were urged to consult Jacques Aymar.    Though actually a stonemason, Aymar had become fairly famous in the area for his skill as a dowser.   Still known as "water witching" in some parts of the world, dowsing basically involves the using of a "witching" or "dowsing rod" to locate underground sources of water or buried treasure by passing the rod over the ground (think of it as a supernatural version of a metal detector).  While dowsing had largely faded into obscurity by the 17th century, at least in France, local stories about Aymar’s success in locating other lost items quickly spread.

But his greatest fame came from his apparent success at solving crimes.   Several years earlier, Aymar had reportedly used his dowsing rod to track down a thief who had stolen some clothes in Grenoble, France.   Not only did his dowsing rod identify the thief, Aymar reportedly tracked down where the stolen goods were hidden.  According to another story, Aymar had used his dowsing rod to locate the body of a murdered woman and implicated the woman's husband (who promptly fled the parish).  

Feeling that they had nothing to lose (and under considerable pressure to solve the double murder), Lyons magistrates asked the Procureur du Roi to test Aymar and see if he could find the murderer.   Not shy about gaining more publicity, Aymar insisted that he could solve the crime if he and his dowsing rod could be taken to where the murder happened.   In the wine shop,  he carefully dowsed the crime scene and concluded that three men were involved in the murder.   After gaining his impression of the killers, he left the wine shop and began tracking his prey across town.    Following some impressive guesses, he began wandering into the countryside pointing out spots where the killers had slept, ate, etc.    

Although Aymar convinced some of the skeptics, the Procureur General demanded that he be tested further.   The local comptrollers, who likely had a vested interest in proving that Aymar was genuine, conducted several tests in which he allegedly "found" the murder weapon where it had been hidden.   Since the available account fails to provide many details, it is hard to decide how rigorous the testing actually was.  

I any event, Aymar passed all of these tests and was assigned a team of archers to help him arrest anyone who might be implicated by his dowsing.    Following a lengthy search,  his dowsing rod led him to a jail in a neighbouring town where, after securing permission to test the inmates, identified one prisoner as being involved in the murders.    The prisoner, a 19-year-old hunchback who had been arrested for stealing at a local fair, vigorously denied committing the murders or ever visiting Lyons.   While Aymar offered to search for the other two killers, the hunchback prisoner was taken to Lyons for further interrogation.

Given that torture was still allowed in 17th-century France, that interrogation included a lengthy session on the rack and the prisoner was "persuaded" to confess.   Not that he admitted to the actual murders, just to being a servant to the other two killers who were still at large.    Aymar's attempt at locating them failed to turn up any leads and he concluded that they had fled the country.   On August 30, 1692, the hunchback was broken on the wheel in the Place des Terreaux in the heart of Lyons.   While there was no physical evidence linking the condemned man to the murders for which he was executed, his confession was deemed to be proof enough.

With the reputation Aymar gained after the Lyons case,  the Prince de Conde took a personal interest in proving whether or not he was genuine.    After ordering him to Paris, the Prince arranged a new series of tests that would be far more rigorous than anything that had been tried on him before.   In one of these tests, five holes were dug in a garden.   One hole contained gold, one contained silver,  silver and gold were placed in a third hole, copper in the fourth, and the fifth hole contained nothing but stones.  Aymar failed this test miserably.

The Prince then sent Aymar to Chantilly to discover who had been stealing trout out of the ponds in a park.   After carefully investigating with his dowsing rod, Aymar implicated one of the park's keepers who emphatically denied the theft.   Seeing that Aymar was convinced of his guilt, the hapless keeper promptly fled (he likely heard what happened to the hunchback).    To test Aymar further, the Prince arranged for a peasant, selected more or less at random, to be brought in as a suspect along with a young boy who was supposedly the keeper's son.   When Aymar confirmed that they had both been involved in the theft,  the Prince had all the proof he needed.   Since the peasant and the boy were chosen at random (and the boy had not even been in Chantilly when the theft occurred), Aymar was sent away in disgrace.  

Other members of the French government decided to test Aymar as well.   One of them, the Recorder of the King's Council, smashed a window in his house and called for Aymar to find the valuables that had supposedly been stolen.   Not only did Aymar report that the thief had entered through the broken window, he also indicated another window that the thief had used to leave.    Since no robbery had actually happened, that was enough for Aymar to be kicked out of the house as a fraud.   After several other humiliating failures, Aymar left Paris and returned to Grenoble.

While Aymar's reputation for accuracy had taken a serious hit due to his failures in Paris, he was still famous enough to be used in other cases, including the notorious anti-Huguenot campaign to root out religious heretics (no word in the record on how successful he was there).   After that, he faded into obscurity with no details of his later life being available.   Though Jacques Aymar helped popularize dowsing to France,  his success as a crime-solver seems largely limited to the Lyons case.   Even there, whether he actually identified the right man or not is debatable at best.

According to Sabine Baring-Gould in her classic book, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages ( which is still a must-read),  dowsers seem particularly vulnerable to self-deception, especially since the actions of the dowsing rod are largely influenced by unconscious motor actions.   In her own examination of the Aymar case, Baring-Gould was perhaps more charitable than modern skeptics would be and suggests that he may have genuinely believed in his own dowsing ability but that this confidence faded when subjected to actual rigorous testing.   The history of dowsing is filled with examples of dowsers using anecdotes as proof of their success while failing completely when investigated by actual skeptics.  

In Aymar's case, what distinguished from virtually all other dowsers who tried and failed to prove their abilities was the fate of the man he identified as being guilty of the Lyons murder.   Though the prisoner he identified confessed to the crime, the fact that his confession was extracted by torture makes it completely worthless as evidence.    While dowsers have come and gone since Jacques Aymar's time, they largely confined themselves to less ambitious tests such as finding water or precious metals.   

For the most part anyway.    Not that long ago, a controversy over the use of dowsing tools to detect landmines arose leading to the bizarre decision by security forces in Iraq to purchase the devices for use in protecting troops.    That people are still relying on dowsing to make life-or-death decisions centuries after Aymar's debacle demonstrates the need to be more vigilant in protecting people from the harmful consequences of sheer gullibility.

Indian Woman Attempts Suicide Following Sexual Assault by "Witchdoctor"

Police in the Indian state of Gujurat are investigating after a complaint was laid against a man described as a "witch doctor" by a woman alleging that he had sexually assaulted her repeatedly as well as blackmailing her and assaulting one of her relatives.   The woman, who can not be named publicly due to Supreme Court guidelines protecting sexual assault victims,  is a 29-year-old pharmacist living in the Gujurat city of Amedabad.  She stated that she first approached the man, the accused, Anand Vaghela, two years ago after her husband left her.   Vaghela, who had been introduced to her by a cousin, then promised that he could help her with "tantric rituals" that would ensure her husband's return to her.   

While carrying out the rituals, she then began chatting with Vaghela  on WhatsApp after which he allegedly took her to different hotels in the city where he repeatedly raped her and, after taping the abuse  with his mobile phone, blackmailed her in to paying Rs 2.50 lakh (approximately 2,311.50 in U.S. dollars).   When she attempted to avoid him, he then began stalking and harassing her and even threatened to kill her family.   As part of his intimidation campaign, she also attacked her brother a year ago though no arrest was made at the time.   The harassment led to her attempting suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills she obtained at work.   While she survived the attempt, it led to her being hospitalized on March 5 and she then filed the complaint.  

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Exploring the "Unwritten Law" (Part Two of Two)

Continued from Part One

Though dozens of cases invoking the "unwritten law" would be heard in American courts by the end of the 19th century, the homicidal jealousy defense was basically limited to men.   Any woman committing murder under similar circumstances were prosecuted to the full extent of the law.  This became abundantly clear in the case of Kate Southern, a Georgia woman who was charged with murdering a rival for her husband's affections in early 1878.  

According to the lurid news coverage,  Kate had married her husband, Bob Southern, despite the active opposition of Narcissa Fowler (frequently described in the newspaper coverage as a "woman of notoriously lewd character") who had been sexually intimate with Bob before, and after,  his marriage.   Though Kate knew about the affair and had been "unsettled and annoyed by the knowledge", she seemed determined to keep Bob and Narcissa as far apart as possible.    Narcissa actively tried undermining Kate's marriage, including starting scandalous rumours about her and saying that "they would have no peace or satisfaction as long as (Narcissa) lived."  

A few months after Kate and Bob were married, Narcissa confronted Kate at a party where, under the influence of the whiskey she had been drinking, she began insulting Kate using what one witness later described as "epithets too vulgar and obscene to be written or spoken."   After finally provoking Kate into a fistfight, Kate's sister, Amorelli Hambrick got involved as well.   Though Narcissa likely had no idea that Kate was armed with a knife, she learned this quickly enough when Kate stabbed her repeatedly.  The newspaper coverage fails to mention whether Narcissa died at the scene or later but Kate promptly fled.   Joined by her husband and other members of her family, she became a fugitive until a posse eventually tracked her and her husband down.   After being returned to Pickens County where the stabbing occurred, Kate Southern was subsequently charged with murder.  As well, her sister was charged as an accomplice while her husband was charged with helping her escape.

The legal defense that Kate received at her trial was far less spirited than what Daniel Sickles managed to arrange.  Many observers accused Kate's lawyers of mismanaging her defense but their legal options were fairly limited.  There was certainly no question of seeking any kind of defense based on the "unwritten law."   Though husbands could claim that a wife's infidelity was an attack on their "personal honour", wives were expected to endure the extramarital affairs of their husbands in silence.   Women could claim self-defense if they were being raped, but killing an unfaithful husband or "the other woman" typically led to a criminal conviction.  Presumably, the courts didn't feel comfortable giving wives the same "license to kill" that husbands enjoyed.

And so it was with Kate Southern.   It probably didn't help that her defense attorneys failed to launch much of  a defense on her behalf.   Many of the newspaper reporters commenting on the trial openly criticized the lawyers for not calling any witnesses  or their failure to cross-examine many of the prosecution witnesses that were called.    All that they were able to come with was a half-hearted insanity defense which did little to convince the jury.  Her conviction hardly came as a surprise to anyone though the penalty handed down by the judge certainly was.   Kate Southern was sentenced to death by hanging.

Almost immediately after news of the sentence got out,  the campaign to save Kate's life began to mobilize.  Her attorneys mounted an appeal to Georgia's Governor to commute the sentence.   This included numerous depositions from Kate's family members (including her husband) which attempted to show that she was provoked into killing Narcissa.   It also helped that Kate had recently given birth and descriptions of Kate in prison with her baby where she awaited her execution helped the media campaign to save her life.  Petitions with thousands of signatures (mostly women) were sent pleading  for clemency.

The campaign worked.   Kate's sentence was commuted to ten years in prison to be spent in a Georgia prison camp.  Her sister, Amorelli, was sent to the same camp to serve her own sentence.   Thousands of supporters came out to watch the train that would take Kate to prison.  As one newspaper description reported, "at all the towns through which the train passed, the people (ministers, gamblers, women, and all classes) crowded to the depots to see and express their sympathy for her, and at Atlanta, where a large purse was collected for her benefit, the excitement was so great that the car windows were broken."    Her husband found work near the prison and was even granted conjugal visits (Kate had two more children during her time in prison).    After serving only three years of her sentence, she was granted a full pardon and allowed to return home.

Kate Southern largely faded into obscurity after she was released but her case continued to generate controversy.  In the years that followed, more conservative newspaper editors accused Kate's supporters of allowing her gender to save her from execution and argued against granting clemency for women committing murder.  And there would  be no more clemency.   When Emma Simpson shot her estranged husband in 1919, believing that "the new unwritten law, which does not permit a married man to love another woman, will be my defense,"  even Clarence Darrow couldn't save her from being found "insane but guilty."  

While the number of cases claiming the "unwritten law" became less frequent with time,  husbands committing murder to defend their "personal honour"  still used the defense well into the 20th century.  In many U.S. states, the law allowing husbands to kill "interlopers" was formally enshrined into legal statutes (thus making it the "written law").    When and where the law could be used became a major sticking point for many judges who insisted that husbands could only commit murder if it was done in the "heat of passion."  If the husband allowed time for his anger to cool and to become more reasonable, then any homicide committed afterwards became "deliberate revenge" and he could be prosecuted.

In Texas, for example, one statute held that, "Homicide is justifiable when committed by the husband upon one taken in the act of adultery with the wife, provided the killing take place before the parties to the act have separated. Such circumstance cannot justify a homicide where it appears that there has been, on the part of the husband, any connivance in or assent to the adulterous connection."    In other words, the couple had to be caught in flagrante delicto for the killing to be legal (it was eventually repealed in 1974).  Other states, including Georgia, New Mexico, and Utah passed similar law, almost all of which would be repealed by the end of the 1970s.

Today, while husbands are no longer so free to kill to avenge "personal honour", the "temporary insanity" or "diminished capacity" defense is still around in one form or another.  Perhaps fittingly these days, it is more likely to be used by women on trial for murdering their husbands due to domestic abuse (a.k.a. the "battered woman defense") than vice-versa.   Whatever the status of "unwritten law" today however, defense attorneys are still known to use it during murder trials simply because it might work.  There is often no telling what a sympathetic jury might decide to do in cases where they regard the husband (or wife) as being fully justified in committing murder in the heat of passion.

And so, the legacy of Daniel Sickles and Kate Southern remains with us even today.