It may be of service to the reader who cannot occupy himself with special studies to give a brief exposition of the affair of Bois d’Haine in itself, to show the different interpretations of it that have been attempted, and to indicate clearly the actual phase of the question from a scientific point of view.
As early as about the middle of 1868 vague rumors were heard of strange events which were taking place in a little village of Hainault. Every Friday a young girl showed on the different portions of her body corresponding to the wounds of our Saviour Jesus Christ red stains from which blood flowed in greater or less abundance. It was also said that on every Friday this young girl, ravished in ecstasy, remained for several hours completely unconscious of all that was passing around her. Such were the principal facts. Over and above these rumor spread the story of certain accessory incidents, some of which, though true, were distorted, while others were pure fancy. Thanks to the daily press, the young girl soon became known to the general public, and the name of Louise Lateau passed from mouth to mouth. Here and there one read among “current events” that large crowds rushed from all sides, from Belgium and from without, to assist every Friday at the scenes which were being enacted in the chamber at Bois d’Haine. Some journals profited by the occasion to deliver themselves anew of declamations against “Catholic superstitions, the stupidity of the masses, and the intriguing character of the clergy”; while even many men of good faith were of opinion that the story told of Louise Lateau might indeed be true, but ought to be attributed to some trickery or another of which either the girl or her family was culpable.
Happily for the public, a light came to clear up this chaos of versions, suppositions, and diverse and contradictory opinions. The Revue Catholique of Louvain reproduced by instalments, beginning in 1869, a study by Prof. Lefebvre on these extraordinary events. Some time after, this study appeared in the form of a volume. Here is how the eminent physician expresses himself on the origin of his study:
“The story told by the first witnesses of these extraordinary events produced a lively emotion in the public mind, and soon crowds assembled every week around the humble house which was their theatre. The ecclesiastical authorities took up the facts. This was their right and duty. From the very beginning they recognized that the different elements of the question ought to pass through the crucible of science. The periodic hemorrhage and the suspension of the exercise of the senses were within the competence of physicians. I was asked to study them, the desire being expressed that the examination of these facts should be of the most thorough description, and that they should not be allowed to escape any one of the exigencies and severities of modern science.… I deemed it right, therefore, to accept the mission which was offered me. As a physician, I was only asked for what I could give—that is to say, a purely medical study of the facts.”[261]
After having examined the events of Bois d’Haine in all their phases; after having put to the proof the sincerity of the young girl in a thousand different ways and by means of a variety of tests, the eminent Louvain professor pronounced the facts of the stigmatization and ecstasy to be real and free from deception. Passing, then, to the interpretation of the events themselves, the author thus concludes:
“Studying first the question of hemorrhage, I have demonstrated that the periodic bleedings of Louise Lateau belong to no species of hemorrhage admitted in the regular range of science; that they cannot be assimilated to any of the extraordinary cases recorded in the annals of medicine; that, in fine, the laws of physiology do not afford an explanation of their genesis. Coming next to the question of ecstasy, I have carefully gone over the characters of the standard nervous affections which could offer certain traits of a resemblance, however remote, to the ecstasy of Louise Lateau, and I believe I have demonstrated that it is impossible to connect it with any of the nervous affections known to-day. I have penetrated the domain of occult sciences; those dark doctrines have furnished us with no more data for an interpretation of the events of Bois d’Haine than the free sciences which expand in the full light of day.”
I do not hesitate to say that the appearance of this book was a veritable event, and that it marked an important halting-place in the study of the question of Louise Lateau. By those who knew the calm and reflective spirit of M. Lefebvre, and the independence of his character and convictions, the fact of the real existence of the extraordinary events taking place at Bois d’Haine was no longer called in question; and if some doubt still remained, it regarded only the sense in which those events were to be interpreted. Was it, then, true that the union of stigmata and ecstasies belonged to no known malady? Was it true that they could find no place in the classification of diseases, under a new title, with physiological proofs to accompany them?
Notwithstanding the immense credit allowed to the science of M. Lefebvre, doubt still hovered around this question, and I make bold to say, in the honor of the progress of science, that such doubt was legitimate. A loyal appeal was made to the savants of the country and of foreign countries, urging them to go and study the facts at Bois d’Haine and publish their opinion. Soon a study on Louise Lateau, made by a French physician,[262] came to confirm still further the medical study of M. Lefebvre. Then a German savant, M. Virchow, seemed to accept as true the conclusions of the Belgian doctor by that famous phrase that the events of Bois d’Haine must be considered either as a trick or as a miracle.
Meanwhile, certain persons seemed still reluctant to accept facts which a hundred different witnesses affirmed in the face of the world. Among the reluctant are to be ranked, first of all, those who are of bad faith—with whom there is no reason to trouble; others who, for philosophic motives, seemed to accuse the witnesses of those scenes of sacrificing the interest of science to that of their religious convictions. Nevertheless, M. Lefebvre’s book continued to make headway. I do not say that it did not meet with some attacks here and there, and certain objections in detail; but throughout the country no publication of any pretension to seriousness affected either to deny the facts or to give a natural explanation of them. This state of things continued up to July, 1874. At this epoch Dr. Charbonnier, a physician of Brussels, presented to the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine a work entitled Maladies et facultés diverses des mystiques. Louise Lateau.
M. Boëns, on his part, submitted to the same learned body, in the session of October 3, 1874, a new production, entitled Louise Lateau, ou les mystères de Bois d’Haine dévoilés.