543 A. The best known and in some respects best observed modern case of stigmatisation is that of Louise Lateau. In spite of Virchow's famous alternative with regard to this case, ou supercherie, ou miracle, the facts are now thoroughly established and generally accepted by physiologists, and, from the point of view of this book, they fall naturally enough among subliminal responses to self-suggestion. They have an interesting bearing, too, on mediaeval traditions of stigmatisation in St. Francis of Assisi and others.

1 Beaunis, Le Somnambulisme Provoqué.

2 See for a brief account, Revue de l'Hypnotisme, December 1887, p. 183.

3 Revue de l'Hypnotisme, April 1889, p. 298.

4 Revue de l'Hypnotisme, March 1890, p. 278. Compare the inexplicable rises of temperature in Dr. Teale's case, Lancet, 1875, vol. i. pp. 340, 343. 457; vol. ii. p. 107; and 1881, vol. i. pp. 797, 842. This apparent isolability of temperature changes, generally so delicately indicative of conditions of the entire organism, is a phenomenon quite as noteworthy as the dissociability of pain from organic injury.

5 Revue de l'Hypnotisme, January 1890, p. 197.

Louise Lateau was born in January 1850, in the village of Bois d'Haine, Hainault, Belgium. Both her parents were robust and hardy persons, who had never suffered from any form of haemorrhage or of nervous disturbance, and it is further noteworthy that Louise herself had good health up to the age of seventeen, was accustomed to hard work, and had shown a large amount of physical endurance, was noted for her common sense and power of self-control, and bore a good character with all her neighbours and acquaintances, showing no traces, either physical or moral, of any hysterical tendencies.

An illness of an indefinite character, involving intense neuralgic pains, began in 1867, and increased up to March 1868. At that time her appetite was completely gone, and for an entire month she took nothing but water and the medicines prescribed for her. On April 16th she was thought to be dying, and received the Sacrament. From that day she so rapidly improved that on the 21st she was able to walk to the parish church, a distance of three-quarters of a mile, and her remarkable cure was the first incident that attracted public attention.

Three days later the stigmata first appeared, and thirteen weeks later, on July 17th, she began to exhibit the phenomena of ecstasy, during which there was a complete suspension of the exercise of the senses. This occurred every Friday from July 17th onwards, the attack lasting from about 8.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. She was then entirely unconscious of her surroundings, but on waking had a clear recollection of all that had passed through her mind during the attack.

The first appearance of blood issuing from the skin occurred on Friday, April 24th, 1868, when she saw it flowing from a spot on the left side of her chest. In accordance with her ordinary reserved habits, she kept silence on the subject. The following Friday she again remarked it on the same spot, and also on the upper surface of each foot, and she now mentioned it in confession to the priest, who reassured her, and bade her not to speak of the circumstance. On the third Friday, May 8th, blood began to ooze during the night from the left side and both feet, and by 9 o'clock it also flowed from the palms and backs of both the hands. Finally, on September 28th, the forehead also became moist with blood, and these bleedings recurred regularly every Friday up to April 15th, 1870, when Dr. Lefebvre published his report, and later, in 1872, when Dr. Warlomont published his.

It was the religious authorities who requested Dr. Lefebvre, an eminent Louvain physician and university professor, and a specialist in nervous diseases, to undertake the examination of the case. She was under his superintendence from August 30th, 1868, for twenty weeks, during which time he took more than a hundred medical friends to examine the phenomena.

On any day during the week, from Saturday till Thursday morning, there was on the back and palm of each hand an oval spot or patch, redder than the rest of the skin, and about half an inch in its longest diameter; these patches were dry and somewhat glistening on the surface, and the centres of the two exactly corresponded. On the dorsum and sole of each foot there were similar marks, nearly three-quarters of an inch in length. The marks on the forehead were not permanent, and, except on Fridays, the points from which the blood escaped could not be distinguished. The signs announcing the approaching bleeding began to show themselves on Thursday about noon. Bleeding almost always began between midnight and 1 a.m. on Friday. The stigmata did not all bleed at once, but successively, in no fixed order. On the chest the stigma lay in the space between the fifth and sixth ribs, external to and a little below the left breast, and the blood oozed from a circular spot nearly a quarter of an inch in diameter. On the forehead the blood was seen to issue from twelve or fifteen minute points, arranged in circular form.

A band, two fingers in breadth, passing round the head equidistant from the eyebrows and the roots of the hair, would include this bleeding zone, which was puffy and painful on pressure. Dr. Lefebvre estimated the quantity of blood lost on each occasion at about seven-eighths of a quart. The bleeding lasted twenty-four hours. On the Saturday the stigmata were quite dry, with occasional little scales of dried blood on their surface, and quite painless.

The chief authority for this case is Dr. Lefebvre's report, Louise Lateau de Bois d'Haine: sa Vie, ses Extases, ses Stigmates (Louvain, 1870). Dr. Warlomont examined her six years later, and found that the places of the stigmata had become continuously painful, and that there was an additional stigma on the right shoulder.

An excellent and circumstantial English account, based on Lefebvre's report, was published in Macmillaris Magazine, April 1871 (vol. xxiii. pp. 488 et seq.), and the above summary is chiefly founded on this.

Görres' Christliche Mystik, translated into French under the title of La Mystique Divine, naturelle et diabolique (1862), and A Letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury, descriptive of the Estatica of Caldamo, etc. (1842) give some earlier cases, the most important of which is that of Maria Mörl, the Estatica of Caldarno (1812-1868).