BYCHARLES K. MILLS, M.D.
BYCHARLES K. MILLS, M.D.
DEFINITION.—Ecstasy is a derangement of the nervous system characterized by an exalted visionary state, absence of volition, insensibility to surroundings, a radiant expression, and immobility in statuesque positions. The term ecstasy is derived from two Greek words,ἐκandστάσις, which means to be out of one's senses or to be beside one's self. Commonly, ecstasy and catalepsy, or ecstasy and hystero-epilepsy, or all three of these disorders, alternate, coexist, or occur at intervals in the same individual. Occasionally, however, the ecstatic seizure is the only disorder which attracts attention. Usually, in ecstasy the concentration of mind and the visionary appearance have reference to religious or spiritual objects.
SYNONYMS.—Trance is sometimes used as synonymous with ecstasy. While, however, ecstasy is a trance-like condition, conditions of trance occur which are not forms of ecstasy. Other synonyms are Carus-extasis, Catochus, Catalepsia spuria.
HISTORY ANDLITERATURE.—Accounts of cases of ecstasy abound in both ancient and modern medical and religious literature. The epidemics of the Middle Ages, the days of the New England witchcraft, the revivals in England and America, have afforded many striking illustrations. Not a few special cases of ecstasy have become historical. Elizabeth of Hungary and Joan of Arc were both cataleptics and ecstatics. Saint Gertrude, Saint Bridget, Saint Theresa, Saint Catharine, and many other saintly individuals of minor importance have owed their canonization and their fame to the facility with which they could pass into states of ecstasy, catalepsy, or hystero-epilepsy.
Gibbon1has well described the occurrence of ecstasy in the monks of the Oriental Church in the following passage: “The fakirs of India and the monks of the Oriental Church were alike persuaded that in total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh century. ‘When thou art alone in thy cell,’ says the ascetic teacher, ‘shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and thy chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel;and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light.’ This light, the production of a distempered fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos the simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger Andronicus the monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology, who possessed the languages of the Greeks and Latins, and whose versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds according to the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlaam embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the soul in the navel—of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy and blasphemy.”
1Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Esq., in 8 vols., vol. viii. p. 64, London, 1838.
Some of Swedenborg's supernatural visions were, so far as can be judged, simply accounts of attacks of ecstasy; and of like character were the visions of John Engelbrecht as related by Arnold.2
2Observations, etc., London, 1806.
In a very curious American book3published in 1815 a history is given of the wonderful performances of a woman named Rachel Baker, who was undoubtedly in the habit of passing into conditions of religious ecstasy, during which were present many of the phenomena which occur in ecstatics, Catholic or Protestant, religious or otherwise. When seventeen years old she witnessed the baptism of a young lady, which impressed her strongly and caused her to become much dejected and affected about her religious state. She began to have evening reveries or night talks which soon attracted attention. She united with the Presbyterian Church. These reveries after a while expanded into evening exercises which began with prayer, after which she exhorted and made a closing prayer. She removed from Marcellus to Scipio, New York, in 1813, and shortly afterward, in the same year, she went to New York City for medical advice. While there she gave many opportunities to witness her powers when in what her editors quaintly call her somnial paroxysms. Her discourses were good illustrations of what is sometimes termed trance-preaching.
3Devotional Somnium; or, A Collection of Prayers and Exhortations Uttered by Miss Rachel Baker, by Several Medical Gentlemen, New York, 1815.
One of the most interesting parts of this curious book is a dissertation by Samuel L. Mitchill, M.D., on the function of somnium. He says there are three states of animal existence—wakefulness, sleep, and vision or dream. The definition of somnium, which he quotes from Cicero, is a very fair one to be applied to some of the conditions which we now speak of under such heads as lethargy, trance, ecstasy, etc. “By somnium,” he says, “may be understood the performance of certain mental and bodily actions, which are usually voluntary, without the direction or government of the will or without the recollection afterward that such volition existed.” He divides somnium into symptomatic andidiopathic. The symptomatic somnium occurs from indigestion, the nightmare, from affusions of water into the chest, from a feverish state of the body, from debility with fasting, from fresh and vivid occurrences, etc. The idiopathic somnium is divided into somnium from abstraction, somnium with partial or universal lunacy, with walking, with talking, with invention, with mistaken impressions of sight and of hearing, with singing, with ability to pray and preach or to address the Supreme Being and human auditors in an instructive and eloquent manner, without any recollection of having been so employed, and with utter incompetency to perform such exercises of devotion and instruction when awake. To the last of these affections he refers the case of Rachel Baker, whose devotional somnium he describes.
A number of other curious cases are recorded in this book: that of Job Cooper, a weaver who flourished in Pennsylvania about the year 1774; that of the Rev. Dr. Tennent, who came near having a funeral in one of his states of trance, who has related his own views, apprehensions, and observations while in a state of suspended animation. He saw hosts of happy beings; he heard songs and hallelujahs; he felt joy unutterable and full of glory: he was, in short, in a state of ecstatic trance. Goldsmith's history of Cyrillo Padovando, a noted sleep-walker, who was a very moral man while awake, but when sleep-walking a first-class thief, robber, and plunderer of the dead, is also given.
One of the most remarkable instances of ecstasy is that of the girl Bernadette Soubirons, whose wonderful visions led to the establishment of the now famous shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in the south of France. It is related of this young girl by her historian Lasserre4that when about to cross the Gave, a mountain-stream of the Pyrenees, she suddenly saw in a niche of a rock a female figure of incomparable splendor, which she described as a real woman with an aureola about her head and her whole body of surprising brightness. The child afterward described in detail the vision she had seen. Later, on a number of occasions at the same spot, she saw the same vision, described as appearing transfigured. The child believed that she saw the Immaculate Virgin. The Virgin told her that she wished a church to be built on the spot. The place has since become a shrine for Catholics of all nations.
4Our Lady of Lourdes, by Henri Lasserre, translated from the French, 7th ed., New York, 1875.
Meredith Clymer5has written an elaborate communication on ecstasy. Ambrose Paré, quoted by Clymer, defines ecstasy as a reverie with rapture of the mind, as if the soul was parted from the body. Briquet describes it as a state of cerebral exaltation carried to such a degree that the attention, concentrated on a single object, produces the temporary abolishment of the other senses and of voluntary movements.
5“Notes on Ecstasy and other Dramatic Disorders of the Nervous System,”Journal of Psychological Medicine, vol. iv., No. 4, October 1870.
ETIOLOGY.—Under the predisposing causes of ecstasy may be comprised almost all of those described under hysteria. The predisposition to the development of ecstasy will be governed in great measure by peculiarities of religious education and of domestic and social environment.
Extreme religious feeling is undoubtedly among the most frequent ofthe exciting causes of ecstasy. The accidents and incidents of love have also had a place. Sexual excitement is sometimes associated with the production of ecstasy. “In pre-Christian times,” says Chambers, “when, in default of revelation, men worshipped their incarnate passions, we have from the pen of Sappho a description of a purely erotic ecstasy which can never be produced again.” Fear or fright has been known to throw a predisposed individual into an attack of ecstasy. Severe threats have occasionally had the same influence.
SYMPTOMATOLOGY.—In considering the symptomatology of ecstasy it will only be necessary to call attention to the ecstatic attack. The accompanying phenomena are those of hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, etc., already fully described. I cannot do better than quote from Lasserre the account of one of the ecstatic seizures of Bernadette Soubirons. Although given in turgid language and from the religious point of view, the description is a good one of the objective phenomena of ecstasy:
“A few moments afterward you might have seen her brow light up and become radiant. The blood, however, did not mantle her visage; on the contrary, she grew slightly pale, as if Nature somewhat succumbed in the presence of the apparition which manifested itself to her. All her features assumed a lofty and still more lofty expression, and entered, as it were, a superior region, a country of glory, significant of sentiments and things which are not found below. Her mouth, half open, was gasping with admiration and seemed to aspire to heaven. Her eyes, fixed and blissful, contemplated an invisible beauty, which no one else perceived, but whose presence was felt by all, seen by all, so to say, by reverberation on the countenance of the child. This poor little peasant-girl, so ordinary in her habitual state, seemed to have ceased to belong to this earth.
“It was the Angel of Innocence, leaving the world for a moment behind and falling in adoration at the moment the eternal gates are opened and the first view of paradise flashes on the sight.
“All those who have seen Bernadette in this state of ecstasy speak of the sight as of something entirely unparalleled on earth. The impression made upon them is as strong now, after the lapse of ten years, as on the first day.
“What is also remarkable, although her attention was entirely absorbed by the contemplation of the Virgin full of grace, she was, to a certain degree, conscious of what was passing around her.
“At a certain moment her taper went out; she stretched out her hand that the person nearest to her might relight it.
“Some one having wished to touch the wild rose with a stick, she eagerly made him a sign to desist, and an expression of fear passed over her countenance. ‘I was afraid,’ she said afterward with simplicity, ‘that he might have touched the Lady and done her harm.’”
Side by side with this description by the devout Lasserre of the appearance presented by Bernadette when in a state of ecstasy, I will quote the often-recorded account which Saint Theresa has given in herMemoirsof her subjective condition while in a similar state:
“There is a sort of sleep of the faculties of the soul, understanding, memory, and will, during which one is, as it were, unconscious of their working. A sort of voluptuousness is experienced, akin to what mightbe felt by a dying person happy to expire on the bosom of God. The mind takes no heed of what is doing; it knows not whether one is speaking or is silent or weeping; it is a sweet delusion, a celestial frenzy, in which one is taught true wisdom in a way which fills us with inconceivable joy. We feel as about to faint or as just fallen into a swoon; we can hardly breathe; and bodily strength is so feeble that it requires a great effort to raise even the hands. The eyes are shut, or if they remain open they see nothing; we could not read if we would, for, though we know that they are letters, we can neither tell them apart nor put them together, for the mind does not act. If any one in this state is spoken to, he does not hear; he tries in vain to speak, but he is unable to form or utter a single word. Though all external forces abandon you, those of the soul increase, so as to enable you the better to possess the glory you are enjoying.”
Occasionally striking illustrations of ecstasy are to be found among hysterical and hystero-epileptic patients in whom religious faith has no place. In these cases usually other special phases of grave hysteria are present. In some of the descriptions given by Charcot and Richer of hystero-epileptics in the stage of emotional attitudes or statuesque positions the patients are, for a time at least, in an ecstatic condition in which the hallucinations may be connected with sentiments of religion, love, fear, or other emotions. One shows an attitude of menace or an expression of fear; in another the expression is of beatitude or saintly happiness: to this expression perhaps succeeds one of intense joy; to this, one of passion and lubricity. Throughout all the changing phases of attitude and expression the patient has the other concomitants of the true ecstatic state, such as want of volition and insensibility.
DIAGNOSIS.—A cataleptic may also be an ecstatic or the reverse; but not a few cases are on record in the history of which, on the one hand, an individual has been subject over a long period to cataleptic seizures without the recurrence of ecstasy, or, on the other hand, to fits of ecstasy without a single attack of true catalepsy. Cataleptic attacks usually occur with more suddenness than ecstasy; the cataleptic may suddenly become rigid and statuesque—the ecstatic gradually, although it may be somewhat rapidly, passes step by step into a visionary state. In catalepsy and ecstasy the expression of the patient differs. One of the striking features of ecstasy is not simply the absorbed and abstracted, but also the radiant, expression of countenance. In catalepsy the expression is more likely to be vacant or at least negative. In ecstasy waxen flexibility is not present. The muscles can act in obedience to the will, and the trunk and limbs do not maintain the positions in which they are placed for any unusual time. In genuine catalepsy the consciousness is so suspended or altered that the period of the seizure afterward remains a blank in the memory of the patient. In ecstasy, however, the visions and fancies present during the fit can afterward be recalled, and are frequently recounted by the individual.
DURATION, COURSE, PROGNOSIS.—Nothing need be said as to duration, course, prognosis, etc. of ecstasy. The remarks made in considering hysteria, hystero-epilepsy, etc. fully cover these matters.
TREATMENT.—With reference to the treatment of ecstasy little need be said. It must, in part at least, be directed to rousing and changingthe dormant or dreamy condition of the individual. As it is the mind or the volitional nature which is chiefly affected, the use of agents which either directly or reflexly exert a powerful impression on the cerebral centres is indicated. Thus, in all ages harsh measures have received more or less applause in the treatment of ecstasy. The cold douche or shower-bath, the plunge-bath, the hot iron, painful electric currents, scourging, and beating have all had their advocates. Flint6gives details of a case in which burning with a heated hammer was employed for three weeks, the patient eventually recovering, either because of, or in spite of, the treatment. Chambers believes in the forcible repression of ecstatic and emotional exhibitions. “In Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands,” he says, “an epidemic of convulsive fits occurring in sermon-time began to prevail in several parish churches. At one of these, Northmaven, the disease was cut short by a rough fellow of a Turk who carried out a troublesome patient and tossed her into a wet ditch. Nobody else caught it. From what scandalous scenes Europe might have been saved had the first dancer on St. John's Eve been tossed into a wet ditch!”
6Loc. cit.
Trance may be defined as a derangement of the nervous system characterized by general muscular immobility, complete mental inertia, and insensibility to surroundings. The condition of a patient in a state of trance has been frequently, and not inaptly, compared to that of a hibernating animal. Trance may last for minutes, hours, days, weeks, or even months. Astonishing stories, some true, others—and these the greater number—false, frequently find their way into newspapers. A recent story is that of a hystero-cataleptic young woman of Nebraska who is reported to have been for seventy days in a state of trance, during which she was to all appearance lifeless with the exception of respiration and pulsation. She said that she was unconscious during the whole time of her protracted trance, but, although she exerted her utmost power to evince her consciousness, she could not move a muscle. Such cases like the Welsh fasting girl either live or seem to live for a long time on little or no food; doubtless food is often taken secretly.
In an interesting case which, so far as I know, has never been put upon record in any medical publication, attacks of catalepsy or of trance, or of both, occurred three times at long intervals during the life of this individual. The first time was while held in the arms of his mother preparatory to receiving the baptismal rite: the clergyman and others observed that the infant changed appearance and suddenly became rigid. It was feared that he was dying; the ceremonies were stopped, but in response to efforts after a time he came back to a normal state. When about sixteen years of age, while at school, he was accidentally wounded; it was necessary to probe for the ball, and while this was being done he again passed into a trance-like condition. Many years later, while in good health, a prosperous and well-known citizen, he suddenly again fell into an unconscious condition, and was believed to be dead. So marked were the appearances of deaththat after numerous efforts to resuscitate him preparations were made for his funeral. The knowledge of his previous attacks, however, induced his friends and relatives to defer his interment and continue their efforts. He finally revived just as they were about to give up in despair.
Aëtius, according to Laycock,7mentions hysteric death as being very common in his day, and asserts that real death may supervene without any of the ordinary symptoms. The eyes preserve their brightness and the color of the skin remains vivid. Good cites the case of a woman whose funeral was postponed to ascertain the cause of her death, and whom the first touch of the scalpel brought to her senses. Authors and travellers have described wonderful cases of trance which have been observed in Persia and in India. A Persian youth is recorded to have possessed the power to restrain his breath for two days; and fakirs in India are said sometimes to have allowed themselves to be buried alive for weeks. Doubtless, a little Caucasian light let in upon some of these stories might dissolve them, as the esoteric Buddhism of Madame Blavatzsky has been dissipated into thin air by a hard-headed English investigator. According to Diogenes,8Empedocles, a celebrated disciple of Pythagoras, obtained great fame by curing a female supposed to be dead, but whom he discovered to be suffering from hysteria. He termed the affection under which she labored apnoë, and maintained that a female might live in an apparently lifeless state for thirty days.
7Op. cit.
8Quoted by Laycock.
Landouzy has reported an interesting instance of lethargy produced by the application of a magnet to a patient suffering from hysteria major. The attacks of hysterical sleep are often preceded by convulsive phenomena, and, according to Briquet, are often ushered in by epileptoid signs, such as whistling inspiration, movements of deglutition, frothing, and transient rigidity of the limbs. Richer reports a remarkable case of Plendlers of Vienna, in which a young girl, after a series of violent hysterical attacks, fell apparently dead. Preparations were made to bury her, when she was found to be living, having been in a state of lethargy. Among cases observed in Salpêtrière the duration of lethargy has been from two to eight days. Sometimes, in cases of grave hysteria, attacks of lethargy complicated with general or partial contractures and epileptoid phenomena have been observed. The presence of neuro-muscular hyperexcitability is of diagnostic value in determining the nature of such cases; if present, we have probably to deal with phenomena of hysterical lethargy. This symptom may, of course, pass unperceived. A woman came under observation a short time since, being then far gone in pregnancy. About a month before delivery she had a very marked hysterical outbreak, in which she so simulated apoplexy as to make it almost impossible to decide what was the matter with her. She had apparently lost sensation, her breathing was stertorous, her pulse labored, and she had divergent strabismus. In the course of half an hour the symptoms passed off.
In trance, as in ecstasy, the patient may remain motionless and apparently unconscious of all surroundings; but in the former the visionary state, the radiant expression, and the statuesque positions are not necessarily present. In trance, as stated by Wilks, the patients may lielike an animal hibernating for days together, without eating or drinking, and apparently insensible to all objects around them. In ecstasy the mind, under certain limitations, is active; it is concentrated upon some object of interest, admiration, or adoration. Conditions of trance, as a rule, last longer than those of ecstasy.
Beard's9theory of trance is that it is “a functional disease of the nervous system in which the cerebral activity is concentrated in some limited region of the brain, with suspension of the activity of the rest of the brain, and consequent loss of volition. Like other functional nervous diseases, it may be induced either physically or psychically—that is, by all the influences that act on the nervous system or on the mind; more frequently the latter, sometimes both combined.”
9Quoted by Crothers inQuarterly Journal of Inebriety, January, 1880.
T. D. Crothers10has contributed some papers upon the subject of the trance state in inebriety. He gives the clinical history of some cases of inebriety which presented the phenomena of cerebral automatism or trance. He concludes that loss of memory and consciousness may come on in inebriety and the patient give little or no evidence of his actual condition. His conclusions are, that when the trance state is established beyond doubt the individual is irresponsible for his acts during this period. The study of the trance state in affections of such definite origin and positive pathology as inebriety helps to throw light upon its occurrence and explanation in cases of hysteria.
10“Cerebral Trance; or, Loss of Consciousness and Memory in Inebriety,”Quarterly Journal of Inebriety, January, 1880; andThe Trance State in Inebriety: its Medico-Legal Relations; with an Introduction on the Nature and Character of the Trance State, by George M. Beard, M.D., a paper read before the New York Medico-Legal Society, November 2, 1881, Hartford, Conn., 1882.
Dana11reports about fifty cases of prolonged morbid somnolence. Nearly all those reported previous to 1878 are cases of what has been termed trance-like sleep or lethargy. In 1878, Gelineau called attention to a disease which he termed narcolepsy. Dana has seen five cases, and reports two others from notes furnished by Putzel of New York. Some of the cases collected are both interesting and remarkable. Dana calls attention to the distinction made by Briquet between prolonged hysteria and lethargy. In lethargy the condition of unconsciousness is generally more profound, the reflexes are abolished, and the patient cannot be aroused. A patient may even have periods of sleep within the lethargy.
11“Morbid Drowsiness and Somnolence,”Journ. of Nervous and Mental Disease, vol. xi., No. 2, April 18, 1884.
Dana excludes from his cases of prolonged somnolence those cases of drowsiness due to ordinary causes, as old age, diseased blood-vessels, cerebral malnutrition, or inflammation; various toxæmiæ, as malaria, uræmia, colæmia, and syphilis; dyspepsia, diabetes, obesity, insolation, cerebral anæmia and hyperæmia, cerebral tumors and cranial injuries, exhausting diseases, and the sleeping sickness of Africa.
He found that the prolonged somnolence shows itself in very different ways. Sometimes the patient suffers from simply a great prolongation of natural sleep; sometimes from a constant, persistent drowsiness, which he is often obliged to yield to; sometimes from frequent brief attacks of somnolence, not being drowsy in the intermission; sometimes from single or repeated prolonged lethargic attacks; finally, sometimes fromperiodical attacks of profound somnolence or lethargy which last for days, weeks, or months.
He says that most cases of functional morbid somnolence are closely related to the epileptic or hysterical diathesis; but a class of cases is met with in which no history or evidence of epilepsy or hysteria can be adduced, and though they may be called epileptoid or hysteroid, these designations are simply makeshifts; the patients seem to be the victims of a special morbid hypnosis. Possibly they have a cerebral hyperæmia or anæmia.
Under the name of morbid somnolence a case has been reported by P. J. Cremen.12The patient was a man fifty-five years old, who was admitted to the hospital under the care of Cremen. He said he had recently returned from America, where he had taken a drink which had affected his head. He went to bed, and the next morning was found in a deep sleep, from which he could not be aroused. He presented the appearance of a person in a sound sleep or under the influence of anæsthetics. All ordinary measures were unavailing to awaken him from his trance-like condition. He was completely analgesic over the entire surface of the body. He would not eat or drink when simply directed, but when the drinking-cup was placed in his hand he drank, and when bread or meat was given he ate. Subsequently he was seen eating while in the somnolent state with the eyes closed; but after a time he would stop, and had to be urged to commence again. Evidently, tactile sensibility was not lost. The muscular sense appeared to be diminished. The superficial reflexes were abolished, the knee-jerks exaggerated; ankle clonus was absent. Smell and taste were obtunded. Hearing was retained. The state of muscular rigidity during the somnolence was remarkable. He was placed between two chairs, the tip of the shoulder resting upon one chair, the heel of the left foot on the other, and the right leg bent at a right angle to the trunk. A weight of forty pounds was then supported on the rigid chest without causing the slightest yielding or movement from the position described until muscular relaxation took place. He often remained in this state for four or five days at a time or longer. He could be aroused by a strong magneto-electric current. In the intervals between the attacks he was sometimes bright and cheerful, at others gloomy and depressed. When requested to walk, he would do so in a perfectly straight line, from which he would not deviate for obstacles. When told to walk around a table, however, or other obstacle, he would do so. He would try to do anything that he was told, even to standing on his head. The somnolent or hypnotic state could be induced at will by closing the eyelids and pressing the eyeballs for about two minutes. Of the genuineness of the phenomena Cremen had no doubt; he believed that the somnolence partook, in some degree, of the nature of that which has been designated narcolepsy. This case in many respects is similar to cases of catalepsy and automatism at command. A very similar case has been reported in the article on Catalepsy.
12Brit. Med. Journ., Dec. 12, 1885.
Self-concentration in those of robust minds differs rather in degree than in essence from ecstasy or trance and allied conditions in the weak and hysterical. “Archimedes,” says Clymer, “engrossed with a problem ingeometry, feels no hunger and is deaf to the tumult of the soldiers in a captured town; Socrates, occupied with his own thoughts, stands twenty-four hours immovable in one spot exposed to the burning rays of the sun.” Goethe, Blake, and others are on record as having the power to call up images at will. Francis Galton13in a recent work advocates the cultivation of this power of the reproduction at will of mental imagery. Clarke14records many wonderful instances of pseudopia. In what does the ecstatic differ from these except in that the mental status of the individual is different, and that the object of mental concentration is of a special character, consonant with the person's ideas, training, and surroundings?
13Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, Francis Galton, F. R. S., New York, 1883.
14Vision, a Study of False Sight, by Edward H. Clarke, M.D., Boston, 1878.
In brown study or reverie, according to Laycock, the eye is fixed by a muscular action analogous to that of the cataleptic; and not the eye only, for a limb or the whole body will remain in the same position for many minutes, the senses themselves being in deep abstraction from surrounding objects.
Stigmatization (from the Greekστιγμα, a small puncture) is a symptom or appearance which usually presents itself in the form of bloody or blood-like markings on the palms of the hands, the backs of the feet, and the left side, the positions in which Christ was lacerated by the nails and the spear at the crucifixion. In some cases the stigmata are found in scattered points on various parts of the body, sometimes upon the forehead at the position of the lacerations produced by the crown of thorns. In various ages it has been claimed by Catholics that cases of genuine stigmatization have occurred. It is not, however, a matter of Catholic faith, the claim being simply that it is a genuine experience which has some supernatural significance. Hammond15has an interesting chapter on the subject of stigmatization, of which I have made use, and Clymer's16article, already referred to, gives the details of several of the most interesting historical cases. Space will not permit more than a glance at this subject. A case of stigmatization is not necessarily one of hysteria, but the phenomena of simulated, and possibly of genuine, stigmatization usually occur among the hysterical.
15On Certain Conditions of Nervous Derangement, New York, 1881.
16Op. cit.
According to Garres, the first to exhibit stigmatization was Saint Francis of Assisium, who was born in 1186 and died in 1236. In 1224 he was marked, and in memory of the event the 17th of September was set apart as the Feast of the Holy Stigmata by Pope Benedict XI. The story of this occurrence is of a highly emotional and sensational character. Christine de Stumbele, born in 1242, a few miles from Cologne, is another of the famous hystero-cataleptics and ecstatics who were the victims of numerous stigmata. These were irregular as to position and to times of appearance. On one occasion, for instance, she had wounds on each foot from which the blood flowed freely; a little later, on the sameoccasion, she was wounded on the knee, and to the wondering priest who was ministering to her at this time she showed hot nails of hideous shapes. She was not only a case of ecstasy and stigmatization, but a filthy creature withal, who covered herself and others with excrement, which they had the foolishness to believe came from the hand of the devil. Veronica Giuliani, another ecstatic, who conversed with Christ and the Virgin Mary, received the stigmata during one of her prayers, and was canonized in 1839. Imbert-Gourbeyre gives a list of 145 persons who have received stigmata, besides 8 now living known to him. He details one American case, that of a young French Canadian.
Two of the most extraordinary recent cases are those of Palma d'Oria and Louise Lateau. These have become stock cases in books and dissertations on the subject under consideration, and therefore the briefest accounts of them will be all that is required. Palma in 1871 was sixty-six years old, humpbacked, thin, small, and with light expressive eyes. It is important to note that she had seen Louisa Lateau in ecstasy. Wonderful accounts are given of her performances—eating the Host in the presence of the priest; having visions of the devil with a little horn on his forehead; on another occasion Jesus Christ himself bringing to her the communion; seeing the Host flying through the air before entering her mouth. After the communion, usually when others were not present, the stigmatization occurred. Bleedings from the forehead or near it, and hemorrhagic spots on various parts of the body of various shapes, as of hearts and of the cross, appeared. Examination of the skin subsequently showed it to be intact, except that she had a hole in the cranium, which Hammond suggests was of syphilitic origin. Plates are given in the work of the credulous Imbert-Gourbeyre representing these figures.
In most respects the most celebrated of all cases of stigmatization is that of Louise Lateau—celebrated because of the investigations which have been made of her case; because of the amount of literature, theological, scientific, and medical, which has been devoted to her; because of the conflict of opinions even among medical observers in regard to the true explanation of the phenomena she exhibited. Louise Lateau was a Belgian peasant-girl, born January 30, 1850. Her parents were poor. She suffered the hardships of her class, and was as badly nourished and educated as a poor Belgian peasant-girl is likely to be. During the cholera epidemic of 1866 she nursed kindly and patiently many of the victims. In 1867 she became weak, pale, and neuralgic, and sometimes spat blood. On Friday, April 24, 1868, she for the first time noticed blood immediately below the left breast; the following Friday it appeared at the same place, and also on the back of the left foot; later, it oozed from the left side and both feet, from the palms and backs of the hands, and from the forehead. Some weeks after this she began to exhibit the phenomena of ecstasy; and subsequently for months and years, regularly on every Friday, she had a recurrence of the stigmata and ecstasy, with accompanying phenomena, sometimes varying a little in detail. Some of the accounts given by Lefevre and others of her seizures are beautiful descriptions of attacks of ecstasy. She stated that during her attacks she had a distinct vision of the whole scene of the crucifixion.
Numerous experiments, some of them cruel in character, wereperformed to test the genuineness of her conditions of unconsciousness and insensibility. Sight, hearing, and touch were tested. The mucous membrane of the nose was tickled; strong hartshorn was applied to the nostrils; she was pricked and stabbed with needles, pins, and even penknives; painful currents of electricity were used. To none of these did she respond. During her attacks her pulse was thready, ranging from 120° to 130° and upward; respiration sometimes could be scarcely detected, and sometimes fell as low as 10; body-heat was also much diminished. She recollected everything which passed during the attack. Different from Palma d'Oria, the examination of her skin revealed certain appearances. Between Saturday and Thursday oval spots and patches of rosy hue were to be seen on the backs and palms of the hands and on the backs and soles of the feet. They were very much in appearance as if the epidermis were thinned or scraped. The marks on the forehead were not permanent; the chest was only examined during the ecstasy. Before the bleedings blebs began to rise at the position of the spots. The bleeding commonly began in the night between Thursday and Friday. From the forehead of the girl blood sometimes oozed from minute points, which looked as if they had been made by microscopic leeches.
As regards the phenomena presented by Louise Lateau, various hypotheses have been advanced; the chief, however, are the three following: (1) The theological view—namely, that the stigmata were genuine miraculous performances, the blood flowing by supernatural command. (2) The view that the stigmata were genuine pathological phenomena, vaso-motor in character—that the bleedings were in some way similar to attacks of purpura hemorrhagica or to hæmidrosis or bloody sweat. (3) The view that the stigmata were produced by deceit—that in all probability, in order to excite the sympathy and astonishment which are so dear to the hysterical mind, the girl in some way caused the bleedings. The carefully detailed accounts of the phenomena seem to lend the strongest support to the last view.
A good test was employed for the detection of simulated stigmatization in the following case,17which came under the care of Mr. Henry Lee at St. George's Hospital, London. An unmarried seamstress aged sixteen had on the outside of her right leg above the ankle a discolored patch, from which she said that every month for two years there had been a discharge of about a tablespoonful of blood. The patch was covered with minute red spots resembling flea-bites. Fresh red spots and effusion of blood were seen at succeeding visits. Lee ordered a sheet of lead to be applied over the bleeding surface, to be secured by a starched bandage. On the next visit, when the dressings were removed, a few spots and a little blood were found, but the sheet of lead was pierced with holes large enough to admit a needle. When asked how this had happened the girl was silent, and was discharged as a convicted impostor. In Lefevre's experiment with Louise Lateau he placed a leather glove upon one hand, tying and sealing it at the wrists; but it is easily to be seen why this test was not as thorough as that with the lead.
17British Medical Journal, vol. i., 1871, p. 479.
Another case of ecstasy with stigmatization is cited by Bourneville and Hammond from Magnus Huss of Stockholm—a servant-girl twenty-three years old who was subject to convulsions, and also tohemorrhages, which usually came on as the result of great emotional disturbance. In her case examination showed no cicatrices. The hemorrhages occurred from the scalp, the eyes, the face around the eyes, the left ear, and the stomach. Her menstruation went on regularly during the attacks: sometimes she had ecchymoses and apparent bruises on the left half of the body, the limbs of which were semi-paralyzed for short periods. The attacks occurred with convulsions and unconsciousness, which usually lasted about half an hour, and from which she awakened as if from a long sleep.
Certain peculiar phenomena have been described under the head of femmes autographiques, or the autographic women, and are worthy of note. Dujardin-Beaumetz18in a case of well-marked hysteria with loss of general sensibility reports that he was able to write or trace with a needle or pointed instrument on the skin. Within a space thus traced the skin was elevated in a white patch or plate. After some five minutes the line would show itself more and more in relief, until it attained from one and a half to two millimeters in thickness. It would remain from three to six, and sometimes twelve, hours. He varied the experiments in many ways, executing upon the skin designs, tables, and names of from ten to fifteen letters. He detected in the centre of some of the spaces traced a marked elevation of temperature, sometimes appreciable to the hand. This woman was known by the name of femme diche, or the autographic woman.
18Bull. et Mém. Société médicale de Hôpital de Paris, 1880, 12, xvi. 197-202.
Dujardin-Beaumetz held that the phenomena were vaso-motor. The red lines traced readily admit of this explanation. The white space in relief, however, was not so easily explained. He had observed among hysterical women, under the influence of pressure, irritation, or the application of magnets, the appearance of patches of urticaria. One of the common tricks of the Spiritualists is to have the name of a spirit that has been called up appear upon the bared arm of the medium. Among friends and private patients, and among the hysterical patients in the wards of the Philadelphia Hospital, I have successfully performed experiments similar to those reported by Dujardin-Beaumetz. Such phenomena are by no means confined to cases of hysteria. One of my most striking successes in an attempt at skin-writing was in the case of a male physician of a peculiarly clear and pale complexion. Certain peculiar conditions of the skin will allow this to be done with facility. The similarity of this class of phenomena to that of the stigmata will at once appear evident. Such phenomena occur among the hysterical with a tendency to vaso-motor deficiency of control.