Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism

William Crookes was a prominent Victorian chemist, and this 1874 book is his own published account of his investigations into physical mediums D. D. Home and Florence Cook, in which he reported observing phenomena he could not explain by ordinary means. Its value is documentary, it is a primary record of what a scientist of real standing claimed to observe and how he described his testing conditions, in his own words. Its limit is the reason for its tier two placement and has been disputed since the 1870s, critics then and since have questioned the rigor of Crookes's controls, and his personal relationship with Florence Cook in particular raised contemporary doubts about his objectivity, so a claim resting on Crookes's reported observations needs to be read alongside that long-standing critique.