2. Abnormal sensations, impressions and moods.
Her attendants are all puzzled by the multitude and intensity, the mobility and the self-contradictory character of the psycho-physical manifestations. Perhaps already before 1497 “she would press thorny rose-twigs in both her hands, and this without any pain”; and so late as about three weeks before her death “she remained paralyzed (manca),” and no doubt anaesthetic “in one (the right) hand and in one finger of the other hand.”—Probably again before 1497 “her body could not,” at times, “be moved from the sitting posture without the application of force.” In February or March 1510 “she could not move out of her bed”; in August, “on some occasions she could not move the lips or the tongue, or the arms or legs, unless helped to do so,—especially on the left side,—and this would, at times, last three or four hours.”—In December 1509 “she suffered from great cold,” as part of her peculiar condition; on September 4, 1510, “she suffered from great cold in the right arm.”[14]
On other occasions she is, on the contrary, intensely hyper-aesthetic. Some time in February or March 1510, “for a day and a night, her flesh could not be touched, because of the great pain that such touching caused her.” At the end of August “she was so sensitive, that it was impossible to touch her very bedclothes or the bedstead, or a single hair on her head, because in such case she would cry out as though she had been grievously wounded.”—These states seem to have been usually accompanied by sensations of great heat: for on the former occasion “she seemed like a creature placed in a great flame of fire”; whilst on the latter “she had her tongue and lips so inflamed, that they seemed as though actual fire.”
And movement appears to have been more often increased than diminished. In the last case indeed “she did not move nor speak nor see; but, when thus immovable, she suffered more than when she could cry out and turn about in her bed.” But in the former instance “she could not be kept in bed”; and in April 1510 “she cried aloud, and could not keep herself from moving about, on her bed, on hands and feet.”—There are curious localizations of apparently automatic movements. During an attack somewhere in March 1510 “her flesh was all in a tremble, particularly the right shoulder”; on later occasions “an arm, a leg, a hand would tremble, and she would seem to have a spasm within her, with all-but-unbroken acute pains in the flanks, the shoulders, the abdomen, the feet and the brain.” On an earlier occasion “her body writhed in great distress.” On another day “she seemed all on fire and lost her power of speech, and made signs with her head and hands.” On one day in February or March 1510 “she lost both speech and sight, though not her intelligence”; and on September 12 “her sight was so weak, that she could hardly any further distinguish or recognize her attendants.”—The heat is liable to be curiously localized. Early in September 1510 “she had a great heat situated in and on her left ear, which lasted for three hours; the ear was red and felt very hot to the touch of others.”
Various kinds of haemorrhage are not uncommon. On the last-mentioned occasion bloody urine is passed; bleeding of the nose, with loss of bile, occurs in December 1509; very black blood is lost by the mouth, whilst black spots appear all over her person, on September 12, 1510; and more blood is evacuated on the following day. In February or March 1510 “there were in her flesh certain places which had become concave, like as paste looks where a finger has been put into it.” At the end of August 1510 “her skin became saffron-yellow all over.”
Troubles of breathing and of heart-action are frequently acute. Somewhere about March 1510 “she had such a spasm in her throat and mouth as to be unable, for about an hour, to speak or to open her eyes, and that she could hardly regain her breath.” “Cupping-glasses were applied to her side, to ease her heart, and lung-action, but with little effect.” On one occasion “she made signs indicative of feeling as though burning pincers were seizing her heart”; and on a day soon after “she felt like a hard nail at her heart.”[15]
Disturbances of the power of swallowing and of nutrition are often grave and sudden, and in curious contradiction to her abnormally acute and shifting longing for and revulsion from certain specific kinds of food. On August 22, 1510, “she was so thirsty that she felt as though she could drink up the very ocean”; “yet she could not,” in fact, “manage to swallow even one little drop of water.” On September 10 “her attendants continuously gave her drinking water; but she would straightway return it from her mouth.” And on September 12, “whilst her mouth was being bathed, she exclaimed, ‘I am suffocating,’—and this because a drop of water had trickled down her throat—a drop which she was unable to gulp down.” And on a day in August “she saw a melon and had a great desire to eat it; but hardly did she have some of it in her mouth, when she rejected it with intense disgust.” So too with odours. A little later, “on one day the smell of wine would please her, and she would bathe her hands and face in it with great relish; and next day she would so much dislike it, that she could not bear to see or smell it in her room.”—And so too with colours. On September 2 “a physician-friend came to visit her in his scarlet robes; and she bore the sight a little, so as not to pain him.” But she then declared that she could no longer bear it; and he went, and returned to her in his ordinary black habit. And yet we have seen, from the Inventory of her effects, that she loved to have vermilion colour upon her bed and person.[16]
And her emotional moods are analogously intense and rapidly shifting. In the spring of 1510 “she cried aloud because of the great pain: this attack lasted a day and a night”; in the night of August 10 “she tossed about with many exclamations”; and at the beginning of September “she cried out with a loud voice.” At other times, she laughs for joy. So at the end of April “she would laugh without speaking”; on August 11 “she fixed her eyes steadily on the ceiling; and for about an hour she abode all but immovable, and spoke not, but kept laughing in a very joyous fashion”; on August 17 great interior jubilation “expressed itself in merry laughter”; and on the evening of September 7 “her joy appeared exteriorly in laughter which lasted, with but small interruptions, for some two hours.”—And her entire apparent condition would shift from one such extreme to the other with extraordinary swiftness. In the autumn of 1509 “she many times remained as though dead; and at other times she would appear as healthy,—as though she had never had anything the matter with her.” Already in December 1509 she herself, after much vomiting and loss of blood, had sent for her Confessor and had declared that “she felt as though she must die in consequence of these many accidents.” Yet even on September 10, 1510, “when she was not being oppressed and tormented by her accidents (attacks), she seemed to be in good health; but when she was being suffocated by them, she seemed as one dead.”[17]