and
applied to Louise's hand and arm so as to prevent any external
excitation of the haemorrhage. It was apparently shown that there was no
such interference, for the blood began to flow at the usual time on
Friday.

In addition to the stigmata and the paroxysms of ecstasy, Louise
declared that she did not sleep, had eaten or drank nothing for four
years, had had no faecal evacuation for three years and a half, and that
the urine was entirely suppressed.

M. Warlomont examined the blood and products of respiration chemically,
and satisfied himself of their normal character, except that the former
contained an excessive amount of white corpuscles.

When being closely interrogated, Louise admitted that, though she did
not sleep, she had short periods of forgetfulness at night. On M.
Warlomont suddenly opening a cupboard in her room, he found it to
contain fruit and bread, and her chamber communicated directly with a
yard at the back of the house. It was therefore perfectly possible for
her to have slept, eaten, defecated, and urinated, without any one
knowing that she did so.

The conclusions arrived at by M. Warlomont were, that the
stigmatizations and ecstasies of Louise Lateau were real and to be
explained upon well-known physiological and pathological principles,
that she "worked, and dispensed heat, that she lost every Friday a
certain quantity of blood by the stigmata, that the air she expired
contained the vapor of water and carbonic acid, that her weight had not
materially altered since she had come under observation. She consumes
carbon and it is not from her own body that she gets it. Where does she
get it from? Physiology answers, 'She eats.'"

Relative to the assumed abstinence in the cases of Palma d'Oria, Louise
Lateau and other subjects of ecstasy and stigmata, it is not necessary,
in view of the remarks already made on this subject in a previous
chapter, to devote further consideration to it here. The conclusion
arrived at by M. Warlomont is the only one which science can tolerate.
Should Louise Lateau or Palma d'Oria ever be subjected to as close
watching as was the poor little Welsh Fasting Girl, Sarah Jacob, it will
certainly terminate as badly for them as for her, unless they yield to
the demands of nature and take the food which the organism requires.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Les Stigmatisees; Palma d'Oria, etc. 2d Edition, Paris, 1873, p.
263.

[12] Op. cit., t. ii.

[13] For the theological