Madame Countess Adélaïde de Clérambert.

— Madame the countess of Clérambert lived in Saint-Symphorien-sur-Coise, Department of the Loire; she passed away some years ago, at an advanced age. Endowed with superior intelligence, she had shown, from her youth, a particular taste for medical studies and took pleasure in reading works that dealt with this science. In the last twenty years of her life she had devoted herself to the relief of suffering with an entirely philanthropic devotion and the most complete abnegation. The numerous cures she effected on persons considered incurable had given her a certain reputation; but, as modest as she was charitable, she derived neither profit nor vanity from this.

To the medical knowledge she had acquired, which she certainly made use of in her treatments, she added a faculty of intuition, which was nothing other than unconscious mediumship, because she often treated by correspondence and, without having seen the patients, described the illness perfectly; moreover, she herself said she received instructions, without explaining the manner in which they were transmitted to her. She had often had material manifestations, such as transport, displacement of objects and other phenomena of the kind, although she did not know Spiritism. One day one of her patients wrote to her that abscesses had appeared on him, and to give her an idea of it, he had modeled the pattern on a sheet of paper; but, having forgotten to enclose it with the letter, that lady answered by return of post: “As the pattern you announce to me in your letter did not come, I thought it was an oversight on your part; I have just found one this morning in my drawer, which must be similar to yours and which I send to you.” Indeed, this pattern exactly reproduced the form and size of the abscess. She treated neither by magnetism, nor by the imposition of hands, nor by the ostensible intervention of the Spirits, but by the use of medicines which, for the most part, she herself prepared, according to the indications that were furnished to her. Her medication varied for the same illness, according to the individuals; she had no secret remedy of universal efficacy, but guided herself according to the circumstances. Sometimes the result was almost instantaneous, and in certain cases it was not obtained except after a continued treatment, but always short, in relation to ordinary medicine. She radically cured a great number of epileptics and of patients stricken with acute or chronic afflictions, abandoned by the physicians.

Madame Clérambert was not a healing medium, in the sense attached to this expression, but a physician-medium. She enjoyed a clairvoyance that made her see the malady and guided her in the application of the remedies, which were inspired in her; furthermore, she was assisted by the knowledge she had of medical matter and, above all, of the properties of plants. By her dedication, by her moral and material disinterestedness, never belied, by her unalterable benevolence toward those who addressed themselves to her, Madame Clérambert, like the abbot prince of Hohenlohe, must have preserved until the end of her life the precious faculty that had been granted to her, and which, no doubt, she would have seen weaken and disappear, had she not persevered in the noble use she made of it.

Her position of fortune, without being brilliant, was sufficient to remove any pretext for any remuneration whatsoever; thus, she received absolutely nothing, but she received from the rich, grateful for having been cured, whatever they judged they ought to give her, and she employed it to supply the needs of those who lacked the necessities.

— The documents of the above note were furnished by a person who was cured by Madame Clérambert, and they were confirmed by other persons who had known her. This note having been read at the Spiritist Society of Paris, Madame Clérambert gave the answer that follows.

(Spiritist Society of Paris, April 5, 1867. – Medium: Mr. Desliens.)

Evocation – The account we have just read naturally provokes in us the desire to converse with you, and to count you among the number of Spirits who wish to contribute to our instruction. We hope you will have the goodness to come at our appeal and, in this case, we take the liberty of addressing the following questions to you:

1st What do you think of the note that has just been read and of the reflections that accompany it?

2nd What is the origin of your innate taste for medical studies?

3rd By what means did you receive the inspirations that were given to you for the treatment of the patients?

4th Can you, as a Spirit and with the help of a medium, continue to render the services you rendered as an incarnate, when you were called to a patient?

Answer – I thank you, Mr. President, for the benevolent words you pronounced on my behalf, and I gladly accept the praise made of my character. I believe it to be the expression of the truth, and I shall have neither pride nor false modesty in refusing it. An instrument chosen by Providence, no doubt because of my good will and of the particular aptitude that favored the exercise of my faculty, I did nothing but my duty, devoting myself to the relief of those who claimed my succor. Sometimes received with gratitude, often with forgetfulness, my heart was no more flattered by the suffrages of some, than it suffered from the ingratitude of others, considering that I knew very well how to be unworthy of some and to place myself above others.

But this is to occupy oneself too much with my person. Let us come to the faculty that earned me the honor of being summoned into the midst of this sympathetic Society, where one likes to rest the eyes, especially when one has been, as I was, a victim of calumny and of malevolent attacks, from those whose beliefs were wounded, or whose interests were harmed. May God forgive them, as I myself do!

From my most tender infancy, and by a kind of natural attraction, I occupied myself with the study of plants and of their salutary action upon the human body. Whence came to me this taste, ordinarily little natural in my sex? At the time I was ignorant of it, but today I know that it was not the first time that human health was the object of my keenest preoccupations: I had been a physician. As for the particular faculty that allowed me to see at a distance the diagnosis of the afflictions of certain patients (because I did not see for everyone), and to prescribe the medicines that were to restore health, it was entirely similar to that of your present-day medical mediums. Like them, I was in relation with a hidden being who called himself a Spirit, and whose salutary influence powerfully helped me to relieve the unfortunate who availed themselves of me. He had prescribed to me the most complete disinterestedness, on pain of instantly losing a faculty that constituted my happiness. I do not know for what reason, perhaps because it would have been premature to unveil the origin of my prescriptions, he had likewise recommended to me, in the most formal manner, not to say from whom I received the prescriptions that I directed to my patients. Finally, he considered moral disinterestedness, humility and abnegation as one of the essential conditions for the perpetuation of my faculty. I followed his counsels and can only congratulate myself for it. You are right, sir, to say that physicians will one day be called to play a role of the same nature as mine, when Spiritism shall have conquered the considerable influence that will make it, in the future, the universal instrument of the progress and happiness of peoples! Yes, certain physicians will have faculties of this nature and will be able to render services all the greater, the more easily their acquired knowledge allows them to assimilate spiritually the instructions that will be given to them. There is a fact that you must have noticed: the instructions that deal with special subjects are the more easily and the more largely developed, the more the personal knowledge of the medium approaches the nature of those he is called to transmit. Thus, I could certainly prescribe treatments to the patients who might address themselves to me to obtain a cure, but I would not do so with the same ease with all instruments; while some would easily transmit my prescriptions, others could only do so incorrectly or incompletely. Nevertheless, if my assistance can be useful to you, in whatever circumstance it may be, I shall have pleasure in helping you in your labors, according to the measure of my knowledge, oh! quite limited outside of certain special attributions. Adèle de Clérambert.

Observation. – The Spirit signs Adèle, although, in life, she was called Adélaïde. Having been asked the reason, she answered that Adèle was her true name, and that it was only by childhood habit that they called her Adélaïde.