or peculiar
irregularities of his heart's action, as shown by a chart recording his
pulsation. Such a chart is obtained for medical purposes by means of a
sphygmograph, an instrument fitted to the patient's forearm and supplied
with a needle, which can be so arranged as to record automatically on
a prepared sheet of paper the peculiar force and frequency of the
pulsation. Or the pulsation may be simply observed in the rise and fall
of a liquid in a tube. Dr. Johnson holds the opinion that a pen in
the hand of a writer serves, in a modified degree, the same end as the
needle in the first-named form of the sphygmograph and that in such
a person's handwriting one can see by projecting the letters, greatly
magnified, on a screen, the scarcely perceptible turns and quivers
made in the lines by the spontaneous action of that person's peculiar
pulsation.

"To prove this, the doctor carried out an experiment at Charing Cross
Hospital. At his request a number of patients suffering from heart and
kidney diseases wrote the Lord's Prayer in their ordinary handwriting.
The different manuscripts were then taken and examined microscopically.
By throwing them, highly magnified, on a screen, the jerks or
involuntary motions due to the patient's peculiar pulsations were
distinctly visible. The handwriting of persons in normal health, says
Dr. Johnson, does not always show their pulse beats. What one can say,
however, is that when a document, purporting to be written by a certain
person, contains traces of pulse beats and the normal handwriting of
that person does not show them, then clearly that document is a forgery.

"Now, in these two specimens of handwriting which we have enlarged it is
plain that the writers of both of them suffered from a certain peculiar
disease of the heart. Moreover, I am prepared to show that the pulse
beats exhibited in the case of certain pen-strokes in one of these
documents are exhibited in similar strokes in the other. Furthermore, I
have ascertained from his family physician, whose affidavit I have here,
that Mr. Bisbee did not suffer from this or any other form of heart
disease. Mr. Caswell-Jones, in addition to wiring me that he refused to
write Bridget Fallon a recommendation after the typhoid broke out in his
country house, also says he does not suffer from heart disease in any
form. From the tremulous character of the letters and figures in both
these documents, which when magnified is the more eas