Legend
< Stigmatisation (continued from page 7-27) >
of the Welsh fasting girl, and one should carefully consider what risk might arise. There is no doubt that she is a very self-willed young lady, and although M. Warlomont recommends strongly that such an investigation should take place, it may be left as an open question whether it is worth while to kill a young girl to demonstrate the fact that all living beings receive nutriment. He well says that the other phenomena presented by Louise ought to be scrupulously separated from the pretended abstinence which physiology must reject. But when we contemplate the fact that there are to be found some excellent and honourable men, even in England, who corroborate the statements of Louise, and give their oath of credulity to the allegation that she makes a continual expenditure of blood, without receiving any food, and that her organic equilibrium does not vary, we may ponder on the logic of a learned cleric who affirms that there can be continual subtraction without diminution of the mass. The taunt has been thrown out by Professor Virchow and others, that those who have control over Louise Lateau will never permit her to be placed in any other house than her own, where the trick has been constantly practised for the last three years. We do not think they will. But the fact is clear that she works and expends caloric; that she loses every Friday a certain quantity of blood by the stigmata; the gas which she expires contains carbonic acid; her weight has scarcely varied since she has been observed. It is clear, therefore, that she burns carbon, and that it is not from her own organism that she derives it. Physiology, therefore, tells us that she must eat. M. Warlomont prays that she may be watched, but hints are thrown out that the Bishop of Tournay wishes to throw some obstacles in the way. Science, however, will continue to doubt whether he permits the tests or not.
But while we admit that with regard to the alleged fasting, the evidence is not yet complete, we must congratulate M. Warlomont on the manner in which he has tested the stigmata. In his celebrated discourse before the Breslau Congress, M. Virchow declares that stigmatization does not enter into the normal order of things, and that it is incompatible with the ordinary observation of physiological phenomena. In order, therefore to ascertain the sincerity of the stigmatists (the original cause, whether mechanical or spontaneous, being excluded from the investigation), the commission endeavoured to ascertain the fact. Does Louise Lateau really bleed? The problem to solve was to place one of the stigmatised hands, before it bled, in an apparatus, which, without altering the physiological conditions of the part, should render the contact of any wounding instrument, or the intervention of any manoeuvre to produce bleeding, impossible, and to keep this on from the Thursday, when there was no idea of haemorrhage, until Friday afternoon. The apparatus, which, constructed to effect these tests, was com- posed of a globe of glass fourteen centimetres in diameter, provided at one of its poles with a neck similar to that of an ordinary bottle, and at the opposite pole with another neck nine centimetres across. The first was closed by means of a cock, traversed by a glass tube, not being larger inside than the level of the cork. The inner end of this, as well as of the tube, was covered with perforated metal, not preventing the access of air, but also the introduction of any wounding agent. This precaution was superfluous, as the tube being curved at an acute angle, it was almost impossible to introduce a rod inside the receiver. The cock and tubes were fixed by many wax seals. The second neck was provided with a sleeve of mackintosh fixed at its external edge by means of indiarubber dissolved in naphtha, which perfectly stuck on, and would not have permitted the mackintosh to have been torn without many rents. For further security this part of the sleeve was covered with a narrow india-rubber bracelet fastened on one hand to the globe, and on the other to the edge of the sleeve of five seals. Provided with this apparatus, they visited Louise Lateau at 2 p.m. on Thursday, 21st Jan., accompanied by some respectable medical and clerical witnesses. After having ascertained with the greatest care that the stigmata were not the seat of any haemorrhage, they chose the right hand for the subject of their tests. They were aware that this hand commonly bleeds less than the left, but as they were about to condemn for twenty hours the whole limb to immobility, it appeared convenient to choose the right hand, which was almost inactive by the pains of the right shoulder, and to leave the left arm free. The right hand was then introduced into the bowl, through its large opening, where it was found to be entirely free, surrounded with the air, which was constantly renewed by means of the opposite aperture. This being done, the mackintosh sleeve was slipped on the arm, which it covered as far as the spot where the chemise sleeve came down. It was gummed to the arm by the adhesive substance, and then bound round with a tape two and a half centimetres broad, turning twice round the arm sufficiently tight to prevent the passage of any instrument, and loose enough to be comfortable; finally, the upper edge of the india-rubber sleeve was sewn to the sleeve of the chemise, and all these fastenings were duly sealed. The inside of the globe appeared in this way to be beyond the reach of any trick; there, however, remained the external end of the tube, by which by exhaustion a vacuity might have been created in the globe, and the blood drawn towards the stigmatic regions. To exclude this possibility, and to further augment, if it were possible, the elements of absolute security, the commission covered the whole apparatus and arm with a plate of gutta percha, like sticking-plaster, of which the selvage at the level of the lower border of the chemise were attached by two turns of a tape, which were again duly sealed. We may remark that the first, as well as the second envelopes, were of impermeable stuff, which a needle could not traverse without leaving a trace. The whole was bound in a scarf, after which the patient was left to her own devices, an appointment being made for the morning of Friday, at 10.30 a.m., for the removal of the apparatus. At the promised hour they met in the chamber of Louise. The facts which follow are startling, and if it were not that we have ample and respectable medical evidence to prove them, we would doubt. The professor of clinical medicine at the University of Brussels declares that the right hand of Louise was contained in the apparatus. This apparatus was perfectly intact, as was proved by the careful examination of the seals, of which not one bore the slightest trace of being broken, The surroundings of mackintosh and gutta percha did not show any prick or solution of continuity. The lowest part of the bowl was occupied by a little sea of liquid and moving blood, of which the quantity did not exceed five grammes. The dorsal surface of the hand, which we saw first, the palm being turned towards the breast, showed, from its centre to the outer (ulnar) edge, which was lowest, clots of coagulated blood, hard, strongly adherent, covering the surface of the dorsal stigmatic wound, and stopping the flow. This accounts for the relatively small quantity of liquid blood found in the apparatus. The latter having been removed, the clots were examined, of which more than one stuck closely to the bottom of the wound, and this removal, of what answered to a cicatrix, was followed by the reappearance of active and continuous slight haemorrhage. The wound which furnished it was about 1 1/2 centimetres long and 5 millimetres broad; the epidermis had disappeared, the bottom of the wound, occupied by the true skin, was red and fungus like; some small black clots were visible. The whole reposed on an induration of the skin, which was perfectly movable.
At the spot corresponding with the palm of the hand, there was found a larger and more rounded wound. On the external edge the cutis was naked and fungus like; on the inside it was yet covered by the epidermis, but this was stripped off, whitish, and in part covered by a black clot. Like the dorsal wound, the palmar one rested on a slight thickening of the cutis.
An eminent physiologist has suggested to me that the excessive flow of blood on Fridays to the palmar and dorsal surfaces of the hand, may be due to artificial compression of the subclavian vein, either with or without a compress. There appears to be much probability in this supposition, which would thus render the globe experiment of Warlomont reasonable and explicable. For it does not appear that the examination of the patient conducted by him extended higher than the “manche de la chemise,” which would easily conceal a small compressing apparatus, slily introduced, not by the mother, who is now absent from her daughter, but by either of the sisters, or another accomplice.
It, of course, might be easily suggested that even in the apparatus, otherwise so complete, of M. Warlomont, the wound might have been produced by the nails of the fingers forcibly turned towards the palm, This supposition, which, of course, can have no bearing on the wounds seen on the back of the hand, is met by the fact that Louise’s nails have been intentionally cut short.
Dr. Warlomont concludes from this experiment that the hemorrhage appears to have arisen spontaneously, and without the intervention of external violence.
He declares himself a partisan of the theory of Cohnheim with regard to diapedesis, and combats the idea of M. Lefebvre, that the blood escapes without any rupture of the vessels, and that, nevertheless, the blood furnished by the stigmata contains red globules. We need not here refer to the mechanism of the production of blood corpuscles. It is useless to select which hypothesis we prefer, whether that which admits the destruction of the cell-walls to admit the leucocytes to pass, or that which considers that processes similar to endosmosis and exosmosis act in the penetration of the cell-walls. The future will decide that question. It is, however, clear that the leucocytes come out of the vessels; if their escape is governed by an hydrostatic or a dynamic law, the globule is entirely passive; if, as Cohnheim suggests, that it emerges in virtue of a particular special activity, giving a motion inherent to it, it matters little. It is clear that in certain cases, either by cause of the persistent dehiscence of the cellular protoplasm, or on account of the slight resistance of the walls, the red globules emerge from the capillaries without proper rhexis of the latter, in as great abundance as the white globules, and even in the proportion in which they exist to each other in normal blood.
The conditions which produce this passage can only arise from those which influence the container and the contained of, the pathological dilatation of the capillaries and the serous composition of the sanguine fluid. The microscopic analysis, on the one hand, and those of the stigmatic wound of Louise Lateau on the other, have shown in her the existence of both these alterations.
[Many physiological details were then given.]
Such, therefore, are the conditions which determine the origin of the stigmatic condition, and it behoves us now to inquire what is the mechanism which presides at the formation of the stigmata. Psychology alone is susceptible of affording a rational explanation, according to Dr. Warlomont, and he devotes much space, in which we shall not attempt to follow him, in illustration of the theory, even if her fasting is a fraud, that her ecstasies, trances, and stigmata are so far genuine, that they are involuntary and unconsciously performed on her part. He urges the fact that during the last few years there has been determined the localisation of one vaso-motor centre, in a space comprised within the limits of a millimetre, behind the tubercula quadrigemina, and four or five millimetres in front of the point of the calamus scriptorius. It is in this little centre of activity that the seat of syndroma, “ecstasy and stigmatisation” has been placed. Both analysis and synthesis have led to this conclusion. Analysis has demonstrated that all the symptoms shown by Louise during stigmatisation, the first stage of neuropathyanswers exactly to the consecutive phenomena of the division of the sympathetic cervical nerve, and those of ecstasy the second term of syndroma to its excitement. In stigmatisation, as in the section of the sympathetic nerve, we recognise the more or less pronounced con- traction of the pupil, the closing of the eyelids, the increase of temperature and sensibility, reflection, and dilation of the blood vessels. In ecstasy, as also when the nerve is galvanised, the dilatation of the pupil is observed, as well as the opening of the eyelids, the lowering of sensibility and temperature, contraction of the blood vessels and loss of reflection.
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