Smith Helene
The nom-de-guerre of a trance medium who came under the observation of Professor Flournoy. Born about 1863, at the age of twenty-nine she joined a spiritualist circle and soon developed powerful mediumistic faculties. In 1894 M. Flournoy was admitted to the circle and thenceforward examined with much interest the clairvoyance and trance impersonations of Hélène. In the winter of 1894 she purported to have visited, during trance, the planet Mars, and many of her trance discourses after that date contain descriptions of Martian life-manners, dress, scenery. At length she claimed to have learned the language of the sister-planet, and this language she spoke with fluency and consistency. (See Martian Language.) Professor Flournoy however, found no evidence sufficient to justify any belief in a supernormal faculty, unless it be telepathy.
Smith, Joseph: (See America, U.S. of.) Sneezing, Superstitions Relating to: It is said that the custom of blessing one who sneezes originated in Italy in the time of Gregory the Great, during a pestilence which proved mortal to those who sneezed. A still older date is given to this custom by some writers, who state that sneezing was fatal from the time of Adam to that of Jacob, when the latter begged that its fatal effects might be removed. On his request being granted, the people gratefully instituted the custom of saluting the sneezer. some diseases sneezing was a bad, in others a good omen. Sneezing to the right was lucky, to the left, unlucky; from noon to midnight good, from night to noon, bad. St.
Austin says that the ancients would return to bed if they sneezed while putting on a shoe.
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