austion that they are
obliged to have water poured on their heads! What! we find men
pretending to sentiments of religion and humanity dealing, with the full
swing of their arms, thirty or forty thousand blows with heavy clubs on
the arms, on the legs, on the heads of young girls, and making other
desperate efforts capable of crushing the skulls of the sufferers! What!
we find cultivated ladies, pious and of high rank, doctors of law, civil
and canonical, laymen of character, even curates, daily witnessing this
spectacle of fanaticism and horror in silence, instead of opposing it
with all their force; nay, they applaud it by their presence, even by
their countenance and their conversation! Was ever, throughout all
history, such another example of excesses thus scandalous, thus
multiplied?"[43]

De Lan, another opponent, thus sketches the same scenes:--"Young girls,
bareheaded, dashed their heads against a wall or against a marble slab;
they caused their limbs to be drawn by strong men, even to the extent of
dislocation;[44] they caused blows to be given them that would kill the
most robust, and in such numbers that one is terrified. I know one
person who counted four thousand at a single sitting; they were given
sometimes with the palm of the hand, sometimes with the fist; sometimes
on the back, sometimes on the stomach. Occasionally, heavy cudgels or
clubs were employed instead[45].... Some convulsionists ran pins into
their heads, without suffering any pain; others would have thrown
themselves from the windows, had they not been prevented. Others, again,
carried their zeal so far as to cause themselves to be hanged up by a
hook," etc.[46]

Modern medical writers of reputation usually admit the main facts, and
seek a natural explanation of them. In the article, "Convulsions," in
the great "Dictionnaire des Sciences Medicales," (published in 1812-22,)
which article is from the pen of an able physiologist, Dr. Montegre, we
find the following, in regard to the St.-Medard phenomena:--"Carre de
Montgeron surrounded these prodigies with depositions so numerous and so
authentic, that, after having examined them, no doubt can remain....
However great my reluctance to admit such facts, it is impossible for me
to refuse to receive them." As to the _succors_, so-called, he frankly
confesses that they seem to him as fully proved as the rest. He
says,--"There are the same witnesses, and the incidents themselves are
still more cle