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Vienna, November 15, 1910
IX., Berggasse 19
Dear friend,
Quickly, a piece of news for you to fix (in your possession), which brings strong evidence for thought transference. That will certainly be your great discovery. So listen.
In Munich there is a court astrologer, a woman, who foretells the future with the aid of astronomical tables. One of my patients (Dr. Weil, a serious person not to be suspected of lying) had his future foretold by her. He gave her the birthday of his brother-in-law (his only sister's husband), and she thereupon produced not a bad description of him! What struck him most was the fact that she prophesied that the brother-in-law would undergo a poisoning from oysters or crayfish in July which would give his intestines trouble for quite a long time. The prophecy was made in January; it didn't come true in July, to be sure, but the commendable thing about it remains that the brother-in-law actually had experienced a poisoning from a lobster in July of the previous year. She thus simply prophesied the past again!!! My objection that this is the worst disgrace imaginable for a prophet made no impression on the storyteller, evidently because he so very much liked the prospect.
Another session in April of this year. He presented her with his own birthday and learned that there would be a death in this person's family in October; at the very latest, it would drag out until mid-November. It made a particular impression on him that she said the same thing upon hearing