absolute et perpetua, vel relative et perpetua, incapax sit
intromissionis et quasi inseminationis; aut (2) quum spado sit, et ita
sub decreto Sixti V veniat.
Impotentia in muliere definiri potest: quum nullam vaginam vel vaginam
perpetuo impenetrabilem habeat; vel cum pathologice recuset marem.
Impotentia coeundi potest esse (1) aut antecedens aut consequens;
prout matrimonii contractum anteit aut illi supervenit; (2) perpetua
seu insanabilis, aut temporanea; (3) absoluta aut relativa, in quantum
"aliquem ad quemlibet copulam consummatam inhabilem reddit, aut
tantummodo usum matrimonii inter duas certas personas impossibilem
facit" (Lehmkuhl).
Ut impotentia tanquam impedimentum matrimonii dirimens habeatur, debet
esse: (1) impotentia coeundi; (2) insanabilis; (3) antecedens; (4) aut
absoluta aut relativa.
AUGUSTINUS OMALLEY.
{345}
APPENDIX
{346}
{347}
APPENDIX
BLOODY SWEAT
The bloody sweat of our Lord mentioned in Saint Luke's Gospel (xxii.,
44), has given rise to not a little discussion. The Greek text is:
[Greek text]. The Vulgate has this text thus: "Et factus est sudor
ejus sicut guttae sanguinis decurrentis in terram." The Douay version
is: "And his sweat became as drops of blood trickling down upon the
ground." The King James translation has it: "And his sweat was as it
were great drops of blood falling down to the ground." The Greek text
and the Vulgate and Douay versions are the same, but in the King James
translation the words, "as it were great" differ somewhat from the
statement in Greek.
The belief in the Catholic Church is that our Lord literally sweat
blood through His unbroken skin, and this sweat is commonly deemed
miraculous. Those that deny the sweat was really blood have no ground
whatever for their assertion, because apart from all miracle bloody
sweat can be a purely natural occurrence.
Dr. J. H. Pooley, in _The Popular Science Monthly_ (vol. 26, p. 357),
has an article on this subject in which he reported 47 cases of bloody
sweat through unbroken skin. He, however, is of the opinion that our
Lord's sweat had no real blood in it. Whatever his reason may be for
this assertion he carefully conceals it.
Hemorrhage through the unbroken skin is a rare occurrence; but, as has
been said, Dr. Pooley found 47 cases reported, and there are probably
many others. The discharge may be pure blood which coagulates in
crusts, or it may be blood mixed with sweat; it may be present over
the whole surface of the body or only in those parts where the {348}
skin is thin and delicate. Commonly, bloody sweat is an oozing, but
Hebra, is his _Diseases of the Skin,_ tells of a young man that he
himself observed, from whose legs and hand blood ran, sometimes in
minute jets one-twelfth of an inch in height. The skin was sound, and
the bloody sweat was not caused by any emotion.
The flow may be intermittent, appearing at intervals from a few hours
to months. Sometimes the discharge is connected with skin diseases,
but often the skin is unaffected. Examples have been found at every
age and in both sexes, but this sweat is commoner in women. Du Gard
reports an instance in a child only three months old, and Spolinus
tells of such a sweat in a child twelve years of age.
Bloody sweat may occur in malaria; it may be connected with
neurasthenic conditions, and it has been caused frequently by
overwhelming emotion, as terror and anguish.
De Thou tells of a French officer who was in command at Monte Maro in
Piedmont in 1552, who sweated blood after he had been threatened with
an ignominious execution if he did not surrender the town. The same
writer mentions a young Florentine, put to death in Rome during the
pontificate of Sixtus V, who sweated blood before execution.
The Society of Arts at Haarlem reported the case of a Danish sailor
who sweated blood through terror in a storm. This man was observed
carefully by a physician on the ship. The physician at first thought
the man had been wounded by a fall, but after wiping away the blood he
discovered that the oozing came through uninjured skin. When the storm
had ceased the sailor at once regained a healthy condition.
In the _French Transactions medicales,_ for November, 1830, is
narrated the case of a young woman who had turned from Protestantism
to Catholicism, and after this conversion she grew hysterical because
of persecution by her family. During the hysterical attacks she sweat
blood from the surface of her cheeks and belly.
Before the Christian era bloody sweat was observed by Aristotle,
Galen, Diodorus Siculus, and Lucan also mention such occurrences.
The stigmata of some saints are authenticated cases of bleeding
through the sound skin of the hands, feet, and side during
extraordinary sympathy with our Lord in His Passion, and deep mental
concentration upon that Passion,--the stigmata of Saint Francis of
Assisi, for example. Such bleeding is regarded in the Church as
miraculous. Apart from any question of faith, there is no reason why
they may not be {349} miraculous, especially if the supernatural
quality is supported by other facts; but, again, such stigmata can be
natural. To prove, in general, that stigmata are miraculous requires
commonly heroic sanctity as a background, and even then in all cases
the proof is not necessarily absolute.
Focachon, a chemist at Charmes, applied postage stamps to the left
shoulder of a hypnotised subject, and kept them in place with ordinary
sticking plaster and a bandage. He suggested to the patient that he
had applied a blister. The subject was watched, and after twenty-four
hours the bandage, which had been untouched, was removed. The skin
under the postage stamps was thickened, necrotic, of a yellowish-white
colour, puffy with the serum of the blood and leucocytes, and
surrounded by an intensely red zone of inflammation. Several
physicians, including Beaunis, confirmed this observation; and Beaunis
made photographs of the blister, which he showed to the Society of
Physiological Psychology, June 29, 1885. (_Animal Magnetism._ Binet
and Fere. New York, 1889.)
In Ricard's _Journal de magnetisme animal,_ 2d year, 1840, pp. 18,
151, is a similar case. Prejalmini, in November, 1840, raised a
blister on the healthy skin of a somnambulist by a piece of ordinary
writing paper on which he had written a prescription for a blister.
At the meeting of the _Societe de biologie,_ on July 11, 1885, Bourru
and Burot, professors of the Rochefort school, published records of
epistaxis and of bloody sweat, produced by suggestion on a male
hysteric. On one occasion, after the patient had been hypnotised, his
name was traced with the end of a blunt probe on both the patient's
forearms. There was, of course, no mark of any kind left on the arms.
Then the patient was told: "This afternoon, at four o'clock, you will
go to sleep, and blood will then issue from your arms on the lines
which I have now traced." The man was paralytic and anaesthetic on the
left side. He fell asleep at four o'clock, and while he was asleep the
name appeared on the sound left arm, raised in a red wheal, and there
were minute drops of complete blood (serum and corpuscles) in several
places. There was no change on the paralysed right forearm. Later the
patient himself commanded the arm to bleed and it did so. This second
occurrence was observed by Mabille. (Binet and Fere. Op. cit., p.
199.) Charcot and his pupils at the Salpetriere have often produced by
suggestion alone the effects of burns upon the skin of hypnotised
patients. The blisters in these cases did not appear at once {350} but
after some hours had elapsed. The blisters, of course, contained
blood.
The weekly bleeding, through the unbroken skin, of the hands and feet
of Louise Lateau is an example of stigmata in our own day, which may
have been supernatural or natural. Physicians would call it natural,
an effect of autohypnosis, but there is no reason why it may not have
been just as miraculous as the stigmata of the saints. Professor
Lefevre of the University of Louvain, a physician, said her stigmata
were miraculous. Theodore Schwann, the discoverer of the cell
doctrine, deemed her condition natural.
In the Letters of the Rt. Rev. Casper Borgess, Bishop of Detroit,
Michigan, is an account of a visit to Louise Lateau made in July,
1877. He says, "I first seated myself on the only chair in the room,
which I had placed at the right side, near the head of the bed.
Louise's two hands rested on several thicknesses of folded linen,
spread over the bed-cover, and were covered with a folded linen cloth.
This I removed. The hands were both heavily covered with blood; in
some places it had congealed, and looked very dark; but in the centre,
between the fore and little fingers, on the upper part of the hand,
the blood was quite fresh and flowed freely. Not knowing at the time
that the wiping of the hands causes her intense pain, I proceeded to
wipe off the hands, for a more perfect inspection of the wound on each
hand. The wound, or stigma, on the right hand seemed more than one
inch in length, about half an inch at its greatest width, and was of
oval shape. Turning the hand, I saw a wound of the same form in the
palm of the hand, and opposite the wound on the back of the same. The
blood seemed to rise in bubbles, forming in rapid succession, flowing
in a spread stream down to the wrist. Examining the wound itself, I
was well convinced that the skin of the hand was not broken nor in any
way injured; and there was no sign of a wound made by any material
instrument, sharp or dull. And, withal, the blood oozing out of the
wound appeared a reality, and complete in form."
The bishop evidently uses the term "wound" in a figurative sense,
because he draws attention to the fact that the skin was intact,
continuous. She bled from the dorsal and palmar surfaces of the hands
in areas shaped like the wounds represented by painters on the hands
of our Lord. While the bishop was examining her hands Louise went into
an ecstatic condition.
If the Church defines that a bloody sweat or the stigmata of a saint
are supernatural, that definition, of course, ends the matter for
Catholics as far as the particular case is concerned; {351} but until
such a decision has been made these conditions are all to be regarded
as effects of natural causes working in a natural manner.
In many conditions where the nervous system can have influence a
miracle is very difficult of proof from the context. There can, of
course, be evident miracles in the cure of some nervous disorders,
supposing the diagnosis to be certain. The sudden cure of advanced
paresis would be as much a miracle as the sudden replacing of a lost
femur. Commonly, however, in neuroses if there is an apparently
miraculous healing or similar effect, the supernatural quality can not
be established. Suppose Bernadette reported that she had seen the
Blessed Virgin at Lourdes: the only safe thing to do in such a case is
to deny the apparition until it has been proved. Suppose, secondly,
that a patient who has been confined to bed for years by an hysterical
paralysis, believed in the reality of the vision, had himself carried
to Lourdes, and while at prayer there he suddenly stood up cured. That
effect would prove neither the reality of the vision nor the
supernatural quality of the cure; nor would it disprove either. We
simply can not judge the case, because exactly the same effect has
happened hundreds of times from purely natural impressions. If that
same paralytic were lying in his bed at home and you set the house
afire he would jump up and run.
If the patient, however, had been bedridden with a paralysis caused by
certain degeneration of nervous tissue, and he were cured in the
manner described, that effect would be supernatural, miraculous;
always provided there is no error in the medical diagnosis.
There is a genuine diabetes and a pseudodiabetes. The latter condition
may be diagnosed as true diabetes by a number of physicians, but it is
only a symptom of hysteria. If the pseudodiabetes is suddenly cured,
this cure may or may not be miraculous, but no one can say which is
the truth; the probability is a hundred to one that the cure is
altogether natural. There was a flourishing Christian Science
congregation established in the west recently upon "miraculous" cure
of a case of pseudodiabetes, which some ignorant physicians had called
true diabetes, notwithstanding the fact that Christian Science does
not believe in either diabetes or false diabetes.
We must not, then, call every strange event miraculous; nor, what is
worse, are we rashly to make the supernatural a matter to be explained
away loftily by the impudence of half science. A Belgian priest named
Hahn wrote a monograph {352} to the effect that the ecstatic
conditions observed in the life of Saint Teresa were autohypnotic, and
he succeeded in drawing upon himself the undivided attention of the
Congregation of the Index and a serious disturbance of his peace of
mind. He became a martyr to science. We all like to be "liberal,"
impartial; but from the religious Mugwump _libera nos, Domine!_
Autohypnosis is always a mark of degeneracy in the natural order, and
to call the ecstacy of a saint autohypnosis not only takes all worth
from the manifestation, but the assertion is also untrue. There is a
vast difference between the intense intellectual contemplation of a
great saint in ecstacy, which leaves the person unconscious of the
body and its surroundings, and the cataleptic trance of a neurotic
patient who may mimic the saint.
Hypnotic or autohypnotic stigmata, and by stigmata here is meant
bleeding from the hands, feet, and side, would be degeneracy of the
mind and body in the natural order. Moreover, no clearly established
cases are known, because conditions like those of Louise Lateau are by
no means certainly physical from all points of view, as they would be
if they occurred in an ordinary hysteric. In hypnosis or autohypnosis
the subject's mind and body are degenerate; in sanctity, where at
times may be displayed certain effects that resemble autohypnosis,
there is always a sound mind. A saint may have an unsound, neurotic
body, but a crazy "saint" or an hysterical "saint" is no better than
any other lunatic or hysteric, and certainly anything but a saint. If
a saint has stigmata, these external marks might come (1)
miraculously, as a gratuitous sign of divine favour; (2) as an effect
of natural, intense contemplation of the Passion of our Lord,
producing these bleedings in a sound body; or (3) as an effect of a
rational, intense contemplation of the same Passion, acting, more
easily, on a neurotic body.
Scientific theorising on this matter is necessarily sterile, because
such an investigation is only half material for science,--physical
science. Science is not a bad thing in itself, especially when it
minds its own business and keeps its place below stairs; but it never
sympathises with sanctity, and there is no deep knowledge without
sympathy. Fact-grinding made Darwin "nauseate Shakspere." Science can
not see in the dark as genius and sanctity see, and if it does see in
the dark it is no longer science but genius working on a scientific
object. As Professor William James said: "Science taken in its essence
should stand only for a method, and not for any special beliefs, yet,
as habitually taken by its {353} votaries, Science has come to be
identified with a certain fixed general belief, the belief that the
deeper order of Nature is mechanical exclusively, and that
non-mechanical categories are irrational ways of conceiving and
explaining even such a thing as human life." Science should recognise
its own limitations and not meddle in attempted explanations of the
inexplicable. Therefore, what of the stigmata of the saints from a
scientific point of view? There is no scientific point of view.
AUSTIN OMALLEY.
{354}
{355}
INDEX
{356}
{357}
INDEX
A
Abdominal pregnancy, 5.
Abortion, 22, 48;
causes of, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53;
in puerperal pneumonia, 151;
tubal, 6.
_Abortus_, 19, 20, 49.
Acephalus, 75.
Actinomyces, visits in, 183.
Acute indigestion in the aged, 154.
Addison's disease, death in, 155;
symptoms of, 156.
Adipocere, 7.
Aertnys on ectopic gestation, 26, 27.
Aggressor, 18, 19.
Agoraphobia, 296.
Air-space, 204.
Alcohol,
effects on the mind, 109;
in proprietary medicines, 93;
in snake-poisoning, 118;
in typhoid fever, 118.
Alcoholic amnesia, 110;
climacteric, 108;
delusions, 109, 110;
insanity, 107, 105, 109;
liquors, 108;
poisoning, 107, 109, 110;
pseudo-paranoia, 109.
Alcoholism, 105;
and cirrhosis of the liver, 156;
and coma, 138;
and conjugal infidelity, 109;
and epilepsy, 256;
and idiocy, 113;
and imbecility, 112, 114;
and marriage, 111, 126;
and pneumonia, 151;
and surgical operations, 163;
and the will, 111;
causes of, 108;
children in, 112;
complicating disease, 162;
temperance societies, 112.
Amateur medical advice, 89.
Ambulatory epilepsy, 261.
Amenorrhoea, 241.
Amnesia and epilepsy, 263.
Ampullar pregnancy, 5.
Amputations, uterine, 65.
Anaesthesia in mania, 227.
_Anatomia genitalium mulieris_, 331.
Androgynia, 340.
Aneurism,
causes of, 155;
death in, 155.
Angina pectoris, death in, 142.
Anointing in smallpox, 177.
Anopheles mosquito, 186.
Anthrax, visits in, 184.
Antitoxin, 171, 195.
Aortic valvular disease, death in, 140.
Apoplexy, 143;
and fainting, 145;
hard arteries and, 144;
short neck and, 146;
symptoms of, 144;
the third stroke in, 146;
treatment in, 145;
vertigo and, 144.
Appendicitis,
peritonitis in, 153;
prognosis in, 153.
Apraxia, 263.
Aristotle, his determinants of morality, 14.
Arteries in apoplexy, 146.
Arteriosclerosis and apoplexy, 144.
Aspects of intoxication, 105.
Aspermia, 343.
Asomata, 75.
Assassins of presidents, 302.
_Atresia vaginae et impotentia_, 333.
Autohypnosis, 130.
Autositic monsters, 75.
Azoospermia, 343.
B
Bacteria, 168;
kinds of, 169;
specific causes of disease, 169.
Baptism in ectopic gestation, 83;
of monsters, 87.
Barber's itch, contagiousness, 198.
Barkers, 237.
Beer, percentage of alcohol in, 108.
Beriberi, visits in, 184.
Bibliography of hypnotism, 117.
Bichloride of mercury, a disinfectant, 191.
Black death, 184;
mortality of, 184.
Black fevers, 160.
Bleeders, 124.
Blood brought out by suggestion, 349.
Bloody sweat, 347;
and hypnosis, 349;
cases of, 348.
Books and infection, 195;
disinfection of, 190.
Borgess on the Lateau case, 350.
Brain tumours, 148;
and syphilis, 322;
symptoms of, 148.
Breeding places of mosquitoes, 186.
Breuss' ovum, 73.
{356}
Brick in buildings, 203.
Broad ligament, 3.
Broad-ligament pregnancy, 5.
Bromides and epilepsy, 98.
Bubonic plague,
mortality in, 185;
transmission of, 185;
visits in, 184.
Building materials, 203.
Building sites, 202.
Burns, death in, 156.
C
Caesarean section, 41, 42, 51, 55;
and sepsis, 56, 57;
indications for, 55;
statistics of, 55.
Cancer complicating pregnancy, 44;
death in, 158.
Canonical law on impotence, 326.
Carbonic add in the air, 206.
Cardiac massage, 165.
_Carentia ovariorum_, 334.
Carpets, disinfection of, 194.
Cases of ectopic gestation, 22.
_Castratio et impotentia,_ 342.
Catarrh and proprietary drugs, 100
Cathartics, 100.
_Causae impotentiae mulieris,_ 332.
Cats and diphtheria, 195.
Cells, 69.
Cellular activity and death, 164.
Centrosome, 70.
Cerebrospinal meningitis, 148, 182.
Cerebral neurasthenia, 230.
Chickenpox, 197.
Children of drunkards, 112;
suicide of, 308.
Chorea, 51;
and menstrual disorders, 243.
Chromatin, 70.
Chromosomes, 70, 71.
Circular insanity, 228.
Circumstances m morality, 12.
Cirrhosis of the liver,
causes of, 156;
death in, 156.
Classrooms, 204.
Claustrophobia, 296.
Clothes, disinfection of, 191.
Cocaine, insanity from, 116;
intoxication, 115, 116, 117.
Coeliotomy, 4.
Colelithiasis, death in, 160.
Coma and alcoholism, 138;
and kidney disease, 138.
Composite monsters, 77.
Compulsory vaccination, 175.
Confluent smallpox, 172.
Congenital syphilis, 313;
statistics of, 313.
Conjugata vera, 55, 56, 57.
Conjunctivitis, infectiousness of, 199.
Coninck on impotence, 330.
Consanguinity and monsters, 76.
Conscience, 15.
Constipation, 100.
Contagion, 168.
_Copula carnalis_, 331.
Cornish jumpers, 237.
Cough, physiology of, 91.
_Convulsionnaires_, 237.
Cranial asymmetry and crime, 272, 275.
Craniopagus, 84.
Craniotomy, 22, 28, 42, 55, 56, 58, 59;
indications for, 58;
mortality in, 59.
Cranks, 282.
Crile's method of resuscitation, 166.
Crime, suppression of, 278.
Criminal types not a scientific fact, 271.
Criminals, indeterminate sentence for, 279.
Criminology and the habitual criminal, 271.
Cross immunisation, 172.
Cyclops, 75.
Cysts complicating pregnancy, 40, 41.
Cytoplasm, 70.
D
Dancing plague, 236.
Death
from alcohol, 162;
from varicose veins, 159;
in acute indigestion, 154;
in Addison's disease, 155;
in aneurism, 155;
in appendicitis, 153;
in burns, 156;
in cancer, 158;
in cirrhosis of the liver, 156;
in colelithiasis, 160;
in delirium tremens, 162;
in dysentery, 155;
in ear disease, 159;
in gastric ulcer, 161;
in hydrophobia, 161;
in kidney diseases, 137;
in the lymphatic diathesis, 157;
in mania, 227;
in pancreatitis, 160;
in rheumatism, 153;
in tetanus, 161;
in tuberculosis, 158;
moment of, 164;
prognosis of, 136;
resuscitation after apparent, 164;
unexpected, 135.
Degeneration and criminals, 271.
Degeneracy, symptoms of, 274.
_De impedimento impotentia,_ 326.
Dejecta, disinfection of, 192.
De Lugo, on homicide, 18.
Delirium tremens, 109;
death in, 162.
Delusions in melancholia, 221.
Dementia, 228.
Dengue, visits in, 181.
Dermoid cysts, 86.
Desks in schools, 207.
Desquamation after disease, 197.
Destruction of infected articles, 194.
Dicephali, examples of, 80, 81.
Dicephalus, species of, 79, 80.
{359}
Diphtheria
and domestic animals, 195;
antitoxin, 103, 195;
bacillus, persistence of, 192;
cause of, 187;
communication of, 187, 190;
disinfection in, 190, 193;
error in diagnosis of, 187;
immunity against, 188;
in a school, 196;
precautions against, 190;
visits in, 181.
Diprosopi, species of, 79.
Dipsomania, 110;
cured by hypnotism, 117.
Dipygi, 83.
Diseases
caused by bacteria, 169;
caused by plasmodia, 169.
Disinfection
by formalin, 193;
by steam, 193;
in diphtheria, 190;
of carpets, 194;
of clothing, 191;
of dejecta, 192;
of eating utensils, 192;
of money, 194;
of rooms, 193;
of the body, 193.
Divorce and impotence, 326.
Domestic animals and diphtheria, 195.
Dormitories, 204.
Double autositic monsters, 79.
Draehms on the criminal, 272.
Drainage,
defects of, 203;
of buildings, 203.
Drinking cups and infection, 195.
Drunkenness, accountability in, 106.
Dysmenorrhoea, 242;
varieties of, 242.
Dysentery, death in, 155.
E
Ear disease and death, 159.
Eclampsia, 52.
Ecstacy of saints and hysterics, 352.
Ectoderm, 73.
Ectopic gestation, 1;
baptism in, 11;
children saved in, 30;
difficult to diagnose, 8;
location of, 1;
medical treatment of, 10;
opinions of physicians, 8, 9;
statistics of, 33, 34;
surgical operation for, 23.
Effect of actions, 14, 15.
Embryo, 4;
development of, 73, 74.
Embryotomy, 58.
Emmet on ectopic gestation, 8.
End in morality, 13.
Endoderm, 73.
Epiblast, 73.
Epidemic hysteria, 236, 237.
Epilepsy,
ambulatory form of, 261;
and alcoholism, 256;
and homicide, 253;
and insanity, 253;
and lapse of memory, 262;
and religiosity, 254;
and responsibility, 251;
age at development, 258;
examples of cases of, 259, 262;
idiopathic form of, 257;
irritability in, 253;
masked or psychic, 252;
notions of persecution in, 255;
prognosis in, 257;
symptoms of, 252;
treatment of, 99, 258.
Epileptics and bromides, 98.
Epileptiform convulsions, 256.
Erlich's theory of immunity, 171.
Erysipelas, visits in, 183.
Eunuchs and impotence, 327.
Eviratio, 339.
Evisceration, 58.
Exophthalmic goitre, 247.
Extreme unction in smallpox, 177.
Extrauterine pregnancy, 1, 154.
Eye,
diphtheria in the, 200;
gonococci in the, 200;
infections of the, 199.