some exhibition of feeling while a powerful magnetic battery was contorting his muscles.
In a subsequent part of his volume, Dr. Lefebvre enters into an exhaustive medical study of the facts observed, the discussion of which would be out of place in this magazine. He shows conclusively that, although they have some points in common, the ecstatic trances essentially differ from hysteria, catalepsy, and other allied disorders of the nervous system; while animal magnetism in its various subdivisions of “Braidism,” hypnotism, and electro-biology is equally powerless with somnambulism or the theory of spiritualism to unravel the phenomena presented by this simple peasant girl of Bois d’Haine.
The reader who desires to pursue this inquiry is referred to Dr. Lefebvre’s work (pp. 162 et seq.) and to Fournier’s article entitled “Cas rares” in the fourth volume of the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales, which is replete with curious information upon the subject of the stigmata.
So convincing are the statements of Dr. Lefebvre, who never descends into the advocate or mistakes his own theories for facts, that the case he narrates has been accepted in good faith, and republished within the present year by two of the leading journals[54] of this country and England.
In one of these, Dr. Day, of London, discusses the probable cause of the phenomena with considerable liberality, while the learned Clymer contents himself with reporting the extraordinary facts.
[45] It is scarcely necessary to explain to Catholic readers that this expression is applied to the marks of the five wounds upon our Lord’s body, as described in the Gospel, and illustrated in all representations of the crucifixion.
[46] Among others, White’s Life and Writings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. 1867.
[47] Observations, etc., upon Insanity. London. 1806. Cited by Clymer.
[48] See among others, Salvatori’s Life of Veronico Giuliani, pp. 100-108, and the exhaustive Christliche Mystik of Görres, in which is given a full account of Maria Mörl, the “Ecstatic of the Tyrol.”
[49] Louise Lateau de Bois d’Haine: sa Vie; ses Extases; ses Stigmates. Etude Médicale. Par le Dr. F. Lefebvre, Professeur de Pathologie Générale et de Thérapeutique. Louvain. 1870. 12mo, pp. 360.