6/2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



matizations were real, and tliat she ate, drank, slept, etc., like other 

 mortals. Closely watched and deprived of food as the poor little 

 fasting Welsh girl, Sarah Jacob, was, she would as certainly die. 

 Even Dr. Tanner could not indefinitely resist so great a drain on 

 vital force. Outraged nature would put further maltreatment 

 beyond power of infliction. 



Dr. D. H. Tuke, in his " Influence of the Mind upon the Body,'* 

 adduces numerous instances of the fact that intense sympathetic 

 attention to the physical injuries or pains of another produces 

 similar phenomena and experiences in the sympathizer. Medical 

 men show the connection between skin-diseases and nervous 

 derangement. Urticaria, or hives, in children is the effect of 

 emotional disturbance. In the disease known SiS purpura hcemor- 

 rhagica, Dr. Hammond states that "the blood is deficient in red 

 corpuscles, while there is an increase in the white globules. . . . 

 The affection is further characterized by a tendency of the blood 

 to transude through the coats of the vessels.'' Boerhaave relates 

 the case of a young girl who had ampulla?, or dilatations resem- 

 bling little jugs, on various parts of her body, from which the blood 

 flowed copiously, and which then, like those of Palma d' Oria, 

 closed up without leaving any trace. Similar examples, more or 

 less striking, are well known to dermatologists. From these de- 

 posits of blood in weakened, hysterical subjects, hsemorrhagee 

 follow closely on the occurrence of strong emotion. Thus Francis 

 of Assisi, Louise Lateau, and others, thoroughly excited by pas- 

 sionate devotion and desire to exhibit the stigmata — where such 

 exhibition has been the dominant idea, and the momentary expec- 

 tation of its outbreak has been entertained — have unconsciously 

 so directed the currents of nervous energy that the very phenom- 

 ena desiderated have become visible. There may not have been 

 anything but a remote correspondence between these phenomena 

 and the wounds of the Redeemer, but extravagant fancy would at 

 once ignore the discrepancy. Superstition always believes what 

 it wants to believe, and the common experience of humanity is 

 that each individual can usually behold what he desires to see. 

 Deceivableness is one of the qualities of the human race. Dr. 

 Hammond quotes as the counterpart of the so-called miraculous 

 instances of the stigmata from Dr. Magnus Huss, of Stockholm, 

 Sweden, as cited by M. Bourneville, the case of Maria K — — , a 

 servant-girl, aged twenty-three, from whose skin the blood oozed in 

 various places after emotional disturbance. " When the exuding 

 surface was examined with a lens, no trace of excoriation of the 

 skin was discovered. . . . The most careful inspection failed to 

 show any sign of a cicatrix." She naturally became the object of 

 great curiosity, and, finding that she could cause the phenomena 

 to take place at will, frequently produced the hsemorrhage desired 



