Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/532

498 gique, Historique, et Judiciaire, etc.," has given a very full account of this epidemic, says:

The convulsionnaire Nisette, or Denise, went through still more remarkable performances. At twenty-five minutes past two o'clock in the morning she was struck on the head with a log, then with four logs, and then had her arms and legs pulled in different directions. At length, two men stood on her body, then one on her back, then two others dragged her arms above her head and beat her violently. They then again extended her arms and legs, while one stood on her stomach; then she was hung up by the feet; then balanced by the arms and legs, a man being on her back; then turned round like a spit; and then again pulled by the arms and legs. This pulling lasted a long time, because there were only six persons to pull. Then she was again beaten, and finally thrown on the ground and trodden under foot by fifteen persons at a time.

Calmeil states, on the authority of an observer (Montgeron), that a young girl, named Jeanne Mouler, had insisted on having a hundred blows on the stomach given to her with an andiron, and that one day a brother, who had inflicted this self-imposed torture, made a breach in the wall at the twenty-fifth blow, striking it as he had formerly struck the girl. Montgeron, who evidently doubted the acceptance of this story by the world at large, goes on to say that he was the brother who administered the blows; that he had begun by giving her moderate ones, but that she complained that they did not relieve the pain she felt in her stomach; then he increased the force of his blows, but still not succeeding, he gave the andiron to a very strong man, who did not in the least spare her. This individual struck her with so much force, always on the pit of the stomach, that the wall against which she stood shook with the concussion.

The convulsionnaire then insisted on having the hundred blows, counting as nothing those which Montgeron had given her. He, wishing to ascertain whether his blows had really been as weak as she described them, took the andiron and pounded the wall with it just as he had pounded her stomach. At the twenty-fifth blow the the wall crumbled, and a breach half a foot wide was made in it.

None of the blows which these people received gave them any pain. Pins were stuck into their bodies, but they did not feel them. In fact, they were in that condition of hysterical anesthesia witnessed so often in our own day.

This epidemic lasted fifty-nine years, and at one time over five thousand persons were employed to strike, stretch, and otherwise torment the bodies of those who desired this violence.

Protestants had likewise their epidemics of hysterical convulsions and mania—several of these spread through the Anabaptists of the Continent and England.