Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. MinorDupouy, Edmond
History
Medicine in the Middle Ages: Extracts from "Le Moyen Age Medical" by Dr. Edmond Dupouy; translated by T. C. Minor
Dupouy, Edmond
Medicine, Medieval
A neurosis almost similar occurred the same year among the nuns at
Saint Brigette’s Convent. In their attacks these nuns imitated the
cries of animals and the bleating of sheep. At chapel one after the
other were taken with convulsive syncope, followed by suffocation and
œsophageal spasms, which sometimes persisted for the space of several
days and condemned the victims to an enforced fast. This epidemic
commenced after an hysterical convulsion occurred in one of the younger
nuns, who had entered the convent on account of disappointment in love.
Convinced that this unfortunate creature had imported a devil into the
religious community, she was banished to one of the prisons of the
Church.
At about this same time another epidemic of hystero-demonomania broke
out at the Convent of Kintorp, near Strasbourg. These nuns insisted
that they were possessed. Convulsions and muscular contractions which
followed these attacks, along with delirium, were attributed to
epilepsy. Progressively, and as though by contagion, all the nuns were
stricken. When the hysterical attack arrived they uttered howls, like
animals, then assaulted each other violently, biting with their teeth
and scratching with finger-nails. Among those having convulsions the
muscles of the pharynx participated in the general spasmodic condition.
The attack was announced by a fetid breath and a sensation of burning
at the soles of the feet. One day some of the young sisters denounced
the convent cook, Elise Kame, as a sorcerer, although she suffered
like the others from convulsive hysteria. This accusation finished
the poor girl, who, together with her mother, was committed alive to
the flames. Their death, most naturally, did not relieve the convent
of the disease; the nervous malady, on the contrary, spread around
in the neighborhood of the institution, attacking married women and
young girls, whose imaginations were overpowered by the recital of
occurrences within the convent walls.
We must admit that at that period doctors confounded hysteria with
epilepsy. Spasms of the larynx, muscular contractions that we of the
present day can provoke experimentally, as well as other phenomena
of hysterical convulsions in somnambulic phases of hypnotism, were
considered at that period only the manifest signs of diabolical
possession. As to the stinking breath, which revealed the presence
of the Devil among the nuns, that is a frequent symptom in grave
affections of the nervous system; it is often a prodroma of an attack
or series of maniacal convulsions. We have found that this fetidity of
breath coincides with the nauseating odor of sweat and urine, to which
we attribute the same semeological value as that of the mouth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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