under the very eyes of witnesses who prevented any repeated irritation of the bleeding surfaces. But when the ecstatic trance is borne in mind, the impossibility of imposture is still more evident. How can we conceive that a young girl, brought up in the hardships of manual work, deprived of all instruction, who has read nothing, and seen nothing, could each week, during an entire day, play the part of a consummate actress; that she could simulate not only the abolition of sight and hearing, but complete insensibility to the most exquisitely painful tests; that she could control functions which are essentially beyond the power of the will, as circulation, bodily temperature, respiration; or that she could suspend those excretions which are at once the most humiliating and the most irresistible evidence of human weakness!
If, then, the problem at Bois d’Haine presented only one difficulty—the stigmatization or the ecstasy—it would be next to impossible to explain it on the supposition of fraud. But this difficulty is incomparably greater when we consider these two extraordinary facts in association. To suppose that both the ecstasy and stigmatization were fraudulent would involve the manifest contradiction of admitting that the hæmorrhage, which required a frequent movement to sustain it for ten, fifteen, or twenty hours, could be maintained during the prolonged immobility of the trance. No one, however dextrous, could play this double rôle for eighteen months[53] without detection, although constantly examined by all kinds of people—many of them filled with scientific distrust, and among them more than one hundred physicians.
As an example of the uncertainty of her privacy, Dr. Lefebvre states (in a note) that, on the 11th February, 1870, he was unexpectedly passing through the neighborhood, and, as it chanced to be on Friday, he thought he would stop and see Louise. He knocked at the door—was at once admitted, and went straight to her little room without stopping to speak to the family. It was a quarter to four in the afternoon, and she was completely alone, lying prostrate on the floor, with her arms extended as described, and insensible to all that was passing around her. The bleeding limbs were wrapped in the usual cloths, of which he counted nine. The blood which trickled from her forehead was dried; and, lifting up her little white cap, he noticed the circle of bleeding points on her forehead, which presented the usual appearance. The feet had not been bleeding; on the right hand the flow was just stopping, while on the left the blood was still distinctly flowing from both stigmata. Having ascertained these points, he quietly left the cottage without her having been aware of his visit.
As a general answer to the objection of insincerity, Dr. Lefebvre appeals to both moral and physical proofs. As the most convincing of the former class, he cites the general good repute of Louise, which was never doubted, even by those who most resolutely questioned the nature of the phenomena she presented: her brave and humble life, her contempt for presents or money, her simplicity and avoidance of all parade; her extreme anxiety to conceal the first evidence of the stigmata even from her own family. If, as occasionally happened, money or presents of any kind were offered to her mother or sisters, their wounded pride was unmistakable; and when the
Archbishop of Malines, after a long examination of Louise, once asked the family if they had no request to make of him, they only entreated that they might be relieved of visitors and left undisturbed.
To meet the physical objections raised to the theory of the stigmata, he tried the effects produced by cupping, caustics, and various blistering agents. The first of these has little or no force; for, besides the difficulty of exhausting the air under a cup upon the hard and uneven surface of the back of the hand, it is necessary to cut the skin to make the blood flow, and, when the amount drawn to the surface flows out, the bleeding ceases at once.
Caustics produce a destruction of the skin at the point to which they are applied, and after five or six days an eschar is detached, leaving a sore but not a bleeding surface; or, if bleeding exceptionally occurs, it ceases very soon, and the healing process is slow and always followed by an indelible scar. This in no respect accorded with the facts observed.
The blistering hypothesis seems less improbable, as this class of irritants produce a special form of inflammation of the skin, during which the epidermis is raised from the derm by an exudation of serous fluid. As this process much more resembled the vesicles that preceded the stigmatic bleedings, it was examined with greater care. The characteristic odor of cantharides or ammonia was never perceived, nor could the peculiar spangles of the Spanish-fly ever be detected with a magnifying lens. Litmus paper, moistened and applied to the wounds, gave no evidence of the application of acids. In addition to this, there was no inflamed areola around the stigmata, as is common around the edge of blistered surfaces, and their development was not simultaneous,
but successive; and more than once, in Dr. Lefebvre’s presence, the ampulla or vesicle ruptured spontaneously, and the flow of blood instantly began in its usual quantity.
When, however, the vesicle produced by a blister is ruptured, the raw skin is exposed, but never under any circumstances emits a flow of blood. To prove this in the most conclusive manner, the following experiments were instituted: