Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine : her life, her ecstasies, and her stigmata, a medical study / by F. Lefebvre ; translated from the French ; edited by J. Spencer Northcote.

  • Lefebvre, Ferdinand J. M., 1821-1902.
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Louise Lateau of Bois d'Haine : her life, her ecstasies, and her stigmata, a medical study / by F. Lefebvre ; translated from the French ; edited by J. Spencer Northcote. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    on both lier hands, and on her back. This phenomenon was re- peated three thnes between then and the year 1856, always after violent nervous attacks. Dr. A. B. Franque of Munich attended her from 1857. During six years he observed no cutaneous haemor- rhage, notwithstanding nervous attacks. In 1803, he was at last witness of a sweat of blood. For four days the woman complained of shooting pains along the spine, under the left ear, in her forehead, and in her left arm. Soon after violent convulsions came on, fol- lowed by loss of consciousness. At the end of an hour a profuse pers]3iration came out upon each part in which she had felt these pains; the perspiration was of a reddish colour, and red globules of blood were visible in it when examined under the microscope.^ Case 4. We now come to a still more extraordinary case, in wMch we observe at the same time spontaneous haemorrhage and nervous phenomena. I am glad to have met with it, because it shows that the pathological cases wliich have most features of resemblance with the j)henomena at Bois d'Haiue are nevertheless clearly dis- tinct from them. ' A young girl, twenty-one years old, small-made, of a sanguine temperament, of ii-regular menstruation, with a brain only partly developed, weak-minded, idle, and obstinate, but inclined to a contem]Dlative hfe, was annoyed by her parents for having ab- jured Protestantism. She ran away from home, sought shelter at several different houses, and was at last placed in the hospital. She then had attacks of hysteria, wMch manifested themselves by con- vulsions of the whole system, by exquisite sensibility of the pubic and hypogastric regions, and by feehngs of suffocation, with the hiccough and sobbing which are x^eculiar to that state. When the attack of hysteria was violent, and lasted for twenty-four or thirty- six hours, the sick girl went into a kind of ecstasy, in which her eyes remained fixed, without any appearance of intelligence, and she was either motionless or her movements simply automatic. She sometimes murmured prayers, and a sweat of blood showed itself upon the upper jpart of the cheeks and on the ejDigastrium. The blood escaxDed in small drox:)S and stained her linen. The whole cutaneous capillary system was injected in the part which was the seat of this haemorrhage; the skin there was of a bright-pink colour, and covered with a network of vessels. This phenomenon, which I often wit- nessed, returned each time that the hysterical catalepsy lasted long, or was heightened by the impatience of the sick girl, who, although pious in her way, was very passionate, and by her sour disposition contradicted the idea of holiness which this sweat of blood gave of her to pious but unenlightened persons. 8 Wurtsbilrger MediciniscJie Zeitschrift, vol. iv. 1863.