An Esperantist in Motion Pictures

Esperanto: They ought to
make a movie!

There was little find about Creston C. Coigne, who as a young man in New York wrote a letter to the Sun which appeared in their November 25, 1916 edition, in part because Mr. Coigne died young. When he died, he was probably about twenty-six years old. The 1915 New York State Census says that Mr. Coigne was eighteen years old and worked as a motion picture actor.

It was a family business. The same census lists his father as a motion picture director and his mother as a motion picture actress. Coigne’s brother Armand, was at sixteen and a stenographer. His grandmother, Ella Brous, kept house for the family. The family business was named after him, Creston Feature Pictures. Like many short-lived silent movie studios, it’s a struggle to even find out what they produced. The Catalog of Copyright Entries does list both Ireland a Nation and St. Joan of Arc among their pictures. The firm did advertise that another film, The Scapular, was nearing completion.[1]

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

How Telepathy Works (Or Doesn’t)

I see a picture of two men. One has a beard.

On August 29, 1903, the Deseret Evening News ran a somewhat long piece on (then) current studies on telepathy, viewing it as a controversy between Garret P. Serviss (not a professor, but a journalist, no matter what the Evening News said[1]) and William T. Stead (journalist, publisher, and Esperantist). Mr. Stead announced that there had been a transmission of messages by telepathy from Nottingham to London. Mr. Serviss was skeptical.

The article itself was written by H. Addington Bruce, yet another journalist. Judging from his list of publications, Mr. Bruce did not share Mr. Serviss’s skepticism (or at least saw that books on the subject would sell). For that matter, the article itself seems to assume it most likely that thoughts can be transferred by telepathy. At the time, there was the new experience of “the Marconi system of wireless telegraphy,“ if you could send those messages across the air without wires, why not thought itself?

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!

Advances in Medical Science — The Aura

Kilner said he saw this when looking
at a healthy man

The Washington Times reported on August 5, 1911 on the work of a New York physician who was attempting to add a contribution to the then-current theory of auras. This was the subject of a 1911 book by the British physician, Walter J. Kilner. Although auras have now been exiled to the metaphysical precincts, they were seen as a potential new diagnostic tool.

I don't really want to mock Dr. Francis Rebman, the subject of the article in the Times. He was working in the context of the best science of the day, although he might have approached his researches with just a tad more skepticism.

That, as we all know, didn’t happen. The article begins by suggesting that in the future doctors will ask after their patients’ auras. If my doctor asked me about my aura, I’d be finding another doctor.

---

You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

---

This blog runs solely on ego! Follow this blog! Comment on this post! Let me know that you want to read more of it!