II.
The events of Bois d’Haine continued to occupy public attention. The scenes of the stigmatic flows of blood and of the ecstasies were presented every Friday. It was even stated that from the middle of 1871 Louise Lateau had taken no sort of nourishment. The Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, whether because it dreaded to enter upon a question which involved, beyond the scientific side, a side purely philosophic, or whether also because a fitting and favorable opportunity of taking up the question of Louise Lateau was not presented, remained mute as to the events of Bois d’Haine.
The almost simultaneous presentation of two works treating on the very subject indicated clearly that the question was ripe. Moreover, in the session of October 3, 1874, the chief medical body of the country, conformably with usage, appointed a special committee to make a report on the works read in its sessions. This committee consisted of MM. Fossion, president; Mascart and Warlomont, colleagues.
The important report of the committee was read in the session of the 13th of February by M. Warlomont. That gentleman to show how the study of M. Charbonnier’s work necessitated an examination into the affair at Bois d’Haine, said:
“Ought the committee to confine itself to examining the memorial placed before it from the simple point of view of its absolute scientific value, without occupying itself with the fact which gives occasion for the memorial? It would be easier to do so, perhaps, but an opportunity would thus be neglected of putting the Academy in possession of an actual medical observation, as complete as possible, relative to a fact of which, whether we like it or not, the discussion can no longer be eluded. It assumed, therefore the task of inquiring into the affair forthwith; resolved, however arduous might be the mission thus undertaken, to accept it without regret, to pursue it without weakness as without bias, and to set before the society such elements as its investigation—one altogether official—should have procured. This is the trust which, in its name, I this day fulfil.”[263]
MM. Charbonnier and Boëns were the first in our country who undertook to find fault with the conclusions of M. Lefebvre’s book, and to explain by scientific data the events of Bois d’Haine. M. Boëns, almost immediately after the reading of a portion of his work, withdrew it, and was able by this means to escape the report of the committee. Was this disdain for the judgment of his confrères on the part of the distinguished physician of Charleroi, or was it want of confidence in the solidity of his own arguments? I know not. I state a fact and continue.
There remained, then, for the committee to examine the work of M. Charbonnier. This memoir is voluminous. The theory of the author is substantially as follows: The absence of aliment and the concentration of the faculties of the soul towards one object have been the primary and indispensable conditions of ecstasies and stigmata. As far as abstinence is concerned, it is perfectly compatible, if not with a state of health, at least with the maintenance of life. “The question of abstinence,” says the author, “is the most important, because without it nothing happens. It being well explained, there is no longer anything supernatural in any of the physiological and pathological phenomena of the mystics.”[264]
But how is this abstinence compatible with life? By the law of the substitution of functions and organs.
“The organs,” says the author, “are conjointly associated (solidaires) one with another, working for the common health; so that when an organ, for one cause or another, cannot adequately fulfil its functions, another immediately supplies its place.”
Supposing all this admitted, here is what the author says of stigmatization: