APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
LETTER FROM DOCTOR G. DUMAS
Y DEAR MASTER,—You ask for my medical opinion in the case of Jeanne d'Arc. Had I been able to examine it at my leisure with the Doctors Tiphaine and Delachambre, who were summoned before the tribunal at Rouen, I might have found it difficult to come to any definite conclusion. And even more difficult do I find it now, when my diagnosis must necessarily be retrospective and based upon examinations conducted by persons who never dreamed of attempting to discover the existence of any nervous disease. However since they ascribed what we now call disease to the influence of the devil, their questions are not without significance for us. Therefore with many reservations I will endeavour to answer your question.
Of Jeanne's inherited constitution we know nothing; and of her personal antecedents we are almost entirely ignorant. Our only information concerning such matters comes from Jean d'Aulon, who, on the evidence of several women, states[1152] that she was never fully developed, a condition which frequently occurs in neurotic subjects.
We should, however, be unable to arrive at any conclusion concerning Jeanne's nervous constitution had not her judges, and in particular Maître Jean Beaupère, in the numerous examinations to which they subjected her, elicited certain significant details on the subject of her hallucinations.
Maître Beaupère begins by inquiring very judiciously whether Jeanne had fasted the day before she first heard her voices. Whence we infer that the interdependence of inanition and hallucinations was recognised by this illustrious professor of theology. Before condemning Jeanne as a witch he wanted to make sure that she was not merely suffering from weakness. Some time later we find Saint Theresa suspecting that the visions said to have been seen by a certain nun were merely the result of long fasting. Saint Theresa insisted on the nun's partaking of food, and the visions ceased.