Approximately 33-pp. typed document representing the presumed first English translation of the report from an experiment on brain waves and psycho-physiology, text to rectos only, illustrated throughout with numerous original silver gelatin photographs and one large double-sheet table at the back. Quarto (11 x 9 inches). Cardstock folder with metal bracket binding, typed title to front cover. Some light edgewear to folder, small losses at corners and along spine, very light foxing to title page, overall very good. N.p.: J.B. Sallelmi, n.d. (circa 1940s-1950s). Sold together with a few personal papers from translator John Basil Sallemi, electrical engineer.

Ferdinando Cazzamalli (1887-1958) was an Italian psychiatrist interested in paranormal phenomena and co-founder of the Italian Society of Metaphysics (SIM), the first organization in Italy devoted entirely to the study of paranormal activity. He served as the director of a psychiatric hospital in Como and also as a lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Modena where he worked with psychologically disturbed patients and investigated accounts of telepathy. Together with engineer Eugenio Gnesutta, they developed equipment to measure ultra-high frequency waves to explain telepathy as electromagnetic effects on the brain.

The present report, given as a lecture at the University of Rome, describes one of Cazzamalli's most famous experiments. Conducted over 10 years from the 1920s to the 1930s, the experiment involved recording the electrical activity of the human brain without attaching the standard electrodes to the subject's head. Instead, he used a room covered in lead, a type of Faraday cage, in which the subject would be placed at a distance from several antennae. The antennae would record changes in the subject during various activities. As a result of this experiment, Cazzamalli would conclude that the human brain could, under specific conditions, radiate electromagnetic impulses would could in turn be received by a complex oscillator and amplified. He called the reaction, which correlated with the "sensorial and emotional excitation of the subject brought about by unexpected stimulus" a "psycho-radiant reflex" which could potentially be used for "biophysical exploration in the field of normal and pathological psycho-physiology."

A scarce early report on psycho-physiology; as of December 2025, OCLC locates a few libraries in Italy with what appears to be the original report, one institutional library in North America with a related but not identical title, and zero holdings anywhere of Sallemi's translation.

Book ID: 53594

Price: $1,950.00