Inglis, Brian (1916-1993)

Irish author and journalist, an authority on alternative medicine and paranormal topics. Inglis was born on July 31, 1916, in Dublin. He attended Shrewsbury and Magdalene Colleges, Oxford (B.A., honors) and Dublin University (Ph.D.). He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II and afterward became a journalist and author. He was editor of The Spectator (1959-62).

His original outlook on and mistrust of scientific dogma led him to join the Society for Psychical Research in the early 1960s and make his own investigation into paranormal subjects. He was a founding member of the K.I.B. Foundation, with Arthur Koestler, formed to encourage and promote research in fields presently outside scientific orthodoxies, such as parapsychology and alternative medicine. (After the death of Arthur Koestler, the organization was renamed The Koestler Foundation.)

Inglis wrote numerous books on Irish history, unorthodox medicine, and the paranormal. He was also a consultant to the serial publication The Unexplained.

Parapsychologist Scott Roge complained that Inglis had a bad habit in his writing of suppressing negative information about psychics and researchers he favored by failing to note cases of fraud that were uncovered. Inglis died in 1993.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Inglis, Brian. Fringe Medicine. 1964. Reprinted as The Case for Unorthodox Medicine. New York: Berkeley, 1969.

——. The Hidden Power. London: Jonathan Cape, 1986.

——. Natural and Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal from Earliest Times to 1914. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977.

——. Natural Medicine. London: Collins, 1979.

——. The Paranormal: An Encyclopedia of Psychic Phenomena. London: Granada, 1985.

——. Science and Parascience: A History of the Paranormal, 1914-1939. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1984.

Inglis, Brian, and Ruth West. The Alternative Health Guide. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.