Ernesto Bozzano · 1923
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Ernesto Bozzano (1862–1943) of Genoa was among the most prolific psychical researchers of his generation. Phénomènes psychiques au moment de la mort is a methodical study of the phenomena reported at and around the moment of dying. It collects cases from the published spiritist and psychical-research literature, classifies them by type, and argues from the classification.
The book brings together three of Bozzano’s monographs:
Each monograph sets its cases out in categories of increasing complexity. Bozzano comments on each case and draws his conclusions at the end.
Bozzano states his method plainly. He grants that many of these experiences can be explained as hallucination, and he argues that a classification of the whole body of cases leaves a remainder that hallucination and telepathy do not cover. He concludes that consciousness survives the death of the body. Whatever a reader makes of that conclusion, the book is a primary document of the psychical research of the early twentieth century, and of its attempt to bring the methods of the natural sciences to the question of survival.
The translated source is the French edition of 1923, from a copy on Scribd.