eadly cold." This was followed by a consciousness of
power to move it; and her first effort was to stretch out her paralytic
arm.[11]

But these cures, wonderful as they appear, are far less marvellous than
another class of phenomena already referred to.

The convulsions were often accompanied by an urgent instinctive desire
for certain extreme remedies, sometimes of a frightful character,--as
stretching the limbs with a violence similar to that of the
rack,--administering on the breast, stomach, or other parts of the body,
hundreds of terrible blows with heavy weapons of wood, iron, or
stone,--pressing with main force against various parts of the body with
sharp-pointed swords,--pressure under enormous weights,--exposure to
excessive heat, etc. Montgeron, viewing the whole as miraculous,
says,--"God frequently causes the convulsionists the most acute pains,
and at the same time intimates to them, by a supernatural instinct, that
the formidable succors which He desires that they should demand will
cause all their sufferings to cease; and these sufferings usually have a
sort of relation to the succors which are to prove a remedy for them.
For instance, an oppression on the breast indicates the necessity for
blows of extreme violence on that part; an excessive cold, or a
devouring heat, when it suddenly seizes a convulsionist, requires that
he should be pushed into the midst of flames; a sharp pang, similar to
that caused by an iron point piercing the flesh, demands a thrust of a
rapier,[12] given in the spot where the pain is felt, be it In the
throat, in the mouth, or in the eyes, of which there are numerous
examples; and let the rapier be pushed as it may, the point, no matter
how sharp, cannot pierce the most tender flesh, not even the eye of the
patient: of this, in my third proposition, I shall adduce proof the most
incontestable."[13]

To _some_ extent, it would seem, the symptoms themselves, attending the
convulsions, appeared, to the observant physician, to warrant the
propriety of the remedy desired. Montgeron copies a report of a case
made to him, and attested by a gentleman of his acquaintance, a
Jansenist, who had persuaded his cousin, Dr. M----, at that time a
distinguished physician of Paris, and much prejudiced against the
Jansenist movement, to accompany him to a house where there was a young
girl subject to the reigning epidemic. They found her in a room with
twenty or thirty persons, and at the momen