224 STUDIES IN LIFE AND SE\SE. 



to appear on the palm and back of each hand. The upper surface of 

 the feet also exhibited similar bleeding points, and on her brow a 

 circle of spots also appeared, the markings thus coming to imitate 

 closely the injuries familiar to all in connection with the Crucifixion. 

 Every Friday these points bled anew, the health of the subject of 

 these strange phenomena being visibly affected ; whilst the mere 

 nature of the condition was sufficient to stamp her case as peculiar 

 in the highest degree. At the period when the stigmata began 

 to be developed, Louise Lateau also commenced to exhibit that 

 condition of mind universally known under the term " ecstasy." 

 In this state, which might be described as that of abstraction plus 

 rapture, the mind is removed from its surroundings, as in som- 

 nambulism or the mesmeric state. Louise Lateau, however, could, 

 as in many cases of the mesmeric trance, describe after her return 

 to consciousness the sensations she had experienced. She described 

 minutely her experiences as consisting of the sensation of being 

 plunged into an atmosphere of bright light from which various forms 

 began to appear. The scenes of the Passion were then enacted 

 before her, and every detail of the Crucifixion was related by her, 

 down to a minute description of the spectators around the cross. 

 The successive pictures which were being represented to her mind 

 could be traced in her actions. Each emotion was accompanied by 

 a corresponding movement, and at 3 P.M. she extended her limbs in 

 the shape of a cross. After the ecstasy had passed away, extreme 

 prostration followed ; the pulse was feeble, breathing slow, and the 

 surface of the body bedewed with a cold perspiration. In about ten 

 minutes thereafter, she returned to her normal state. 



Such is a brief recital of a case by no means unique in the history 

 of physiology, but which demonstrates in a singular fashion how 

 mind may act upon body in ways literally undreamt of. There is 

 little wonder that Louise Lateau should have been regarded as a 

 person around whom a special halo of sanctity had been miraculously 

 thrown ; whilst the peculiar fashion in which her body seemed to 

 follow the dreams or visions of her ecstasy in the production of 

 seeming duplicates of the injuries to the crucified body, served but to 

 raise the occurrence to a higher level of the miraculous. Such 

 ecstatic states, however, are well known in the history of science. 

 Maury points out that supernatural revelations were not the exclusive 

 property of the good, but appeared to the sinful likewise. Visions 

 of demoniacal scenes were once as frequent as dreams of heaven, 

 and hence it became necessary, as the last-named author points out, 

 to classify these occurrences as " holy " and " demoniacal." St. 

 Francis d'Assisi was the parent of these "stigmatic" visitations; 

 and M. Maury relates that saints' days and Fridays were the occa- 

 sions on which the " stigmata " almost universally appeared a fact 



