Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Cornelius Gemma, lib. 2 de nat. mirac. cap 4, related of a young maid, called Katherine Gualter, a cooper’s daughter, anno 1571, that had such strange passions and convulsions, three men could not sometimes hold her; she purged a live eel, which he saw, a foot and a half long, and touched himself; but the eel afterwards vanished; she vomited some twenty-four pounds of fulsome stuff of all colours, twice a day for fourteen days; and after that she voided great balls of hair, pieces of wood, pigeon’s dung, parchment, goose dung, coals; and after them two pounds of pure blood, and then again coals and stones, of which some had inscriptions, bigger than a walnut, some of them pieces of glass, brass, etc., besides paroxysms of laughing, weeping and ecstasies, etc. Et hoc (inquit) cum horrore vidi, “this I saw with horror.” They could do no good on her by physic, but left her to the clergy.



From Richard Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 1, Section 2, Member 1, Subsection 2.

Now, it's not all demon possession and vomiting, I don't want to mislead. And it's not an easy book to get into, but once you're in, it's quite fascinating. It's a bit insane, too, but fascinating.

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