Spiritualist, born in Blooming Grove, New York. Poor and uneducated, Davis was apprenticed to a shoemaker in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., at the age of 15. Under the tutorship of a Mr. Livingston in that town, Davis developed supposed clairvoyant powers and, in March, 1844, claimed under prolonged trance to have conversed with spiritual beings and mentors. While in trance, he spoke in depth on many abstruse subjects and diagnosed and prescribed for the sick, who came from around the country to consult him. In 1845, at the age of 19, he dictated to a Rev. William Fish-bough, while asleep, The Principles of Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and a Voice of Mankind, which was published in a 500-page volume and widely read, especially in New England and New York. The book contained many original ideas about life here and in the hereafter, some beautifully expressed, some contradicting the Bible, and some simply incomprehensible. Davis tried lecturing, unsuccessfully, and therefore devoted himself to his writing, based on The Principles of Nature, which remained his most notable work. His books, all of which he claimed to have written under the influence of spirits, include The Great Harmonia (6 volumes, 1850-61); The Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse (1851); The Present Age of Inner Life (1854; 2d ed. 1870); The Approaching Crisis, a Review of Dr. Bushnell on Spiritualism (1852); The Penetralia (1856); The Magic Staff An Autobiography (1857); The Harbinger of Health (1862); Appetites and Passions (1863); The World’s True Redeemer (1863); Morning Lectures (1865); Tales of a Physician (1867); and Stellar Key to the Summer Land and Arabula, the Divine Guest (1867).