Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

Lechler did not keep Elisabeth under continuous observation during these experiments. Realizing that he could not be one hundred percent sure she had not inflicted the wounds upon herself, he performed another series of experiments, during which she was kept under continuous observation by either him or nurses from a hospital. The same stigmata were produced in this second set of experiments—the wounds on the hands and feet, the bloody tears, and the wounds on the forehead. In some of these cases, Lechler personally observed the wounds begin to bleed.

Therese Neumann (1898–1962) was another stigmatic who achieved wide recognition (Rogo 1982, pp. 65–69). As a devoutly Catholic girl living in the Bavarian village of Konnersreuth, she dreamed of becoming a missionary to Africa. But on March 10, 1918, she was injured while fighting a fire at a nearby farm. A few weeks later, she fell down some stairs, and went to a hospital suffering from internal injuries and convulsions. After she was released, she remained at home, a bedridden invalid, her body covered with bedsores. Her left foot began to decay from lack of use. She also lost her sight. By this time, Therese had become devoted to Thérèse of Lisieux. Rogo (1982, p. 66) stated, “On April 29, 1925—the very day Thérèse of Lisieux was beatified—Neumann was spontaneously healed of her blindness. A few days later her left foot . . . regenerated new skin after rose leaves from St. Thérèse’s grave were placed under its bandages. On May 17, 1925—the date of Thérèse of Lisieux’s formal canonization— Neumann’s paralysis immediately disappeared. And on September 10, the anniversary of St. Thérèse’s death, Neumann found her strength so revitalized that she could leave her bed without aid.” Rogo (1982, p. 66) pointed out that Neumann’s paralysis and blindness could have been purely psychological in origin. Nevertheless, the healing of the foot did seem mysterious.

During Lent of 1926, Neumann had dreams of Christ, and developed stigmata, with bleeding wounds on her hands and feet, and a deep bleeding wound on her chest. She said: “The five wounds hurt me constantly, although I have already become accustomed to pain. It is as though something is penetrating into my hands and feet. The wound in the side seems to be really one in the heart. I feel it at every word I utter. If I draw a deep breath when speaking forcibly or hurrying, I feel a stabbing pain in my heart. If I keep quiet, I don’t notice this. But I suffer this pain willingly. Actually, the wounds close up during the week. The real pain lies much deeper inside” (Rogo 1982, p. 67). Later, in November, Neumann developed on her forehead eight wounds, the stigmata associated with the crown of thorns. In 1927, the wounds on her feet deepened, going from her instep all the way through to the soles. Similarly, the wounds on the backs of her hands went all the way through to the palms. Rogo (1982, p. 67) said, “Protuberances resembling nail heads slowly appeared within the wounds on her hands. These nail-like structures, apparently formed from hardened skin, were examined by several doctors and priests. They passed completely through her feet and hands, taking up most of the area of the wounds. The ‘nails’ could be seen on the backs of her hands, bent to the sides of her palms, and also on her feet. A soft, membranelike tissue surrounded them. During her ecstasies this membrane would break to allow blood to flow.”

Each Friday, Neumann would have a vision of the crucifixion, and during these visions her wounds would exude large amounts of blood, which would be soaked up by continuous application of bandages. In addition to her stigmata, Neumann also exhibited other paranormal abilities, such as miraculous healing of others, clairvoyance, and appearing in two places simultaneously.

Stevenson (1997, p. 49) notes this interesting incident in connection with the Neumann stigmata: “A physician of Silesia, Dr. A. Mutke . . . had steeped himself in information about the case of Therese Neumann, which received immense publicity during the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, the physician became severely ill. As he was recovering, a colleague visited him one day and said to him: ‘What has happened to your hands? You are stigmatized.’ On the back of each of the physician’s hands there was a dark red, almost bloody area that was fairly well defined and about the size of a 2 mark piece (of that period in Germany) . . . The stigmata appeared and disappeared—on both hands—five times in all. In November 1934 Dr. Mutke wrote a report of his experience to the Bishop of Regensburg, but the case never became publicly known, and we lack further details.” Gemma Galgani (1878–1903) provides another well documented case of stigmata (Thurston 1952, pp. 52–54). Her stigmata appeared each Thursday evening and continued until Friday afternoon. Her biographer, Father Germano di St. Stanislao, described the appearance of the stigmata: “Red marks showed themselves on the backs and palms of both hands; and under the epidermis a rent in the flesh was seen to open by degrees; this was oblong on the backs of the hands and irregularly round in the palms. After a little the membrane burst and on those innocent hands were seen marks of flesh wounds. The diameter of these in the palms was about half an inch, and on the backs of the hands the wound was about five-eighths of an inch long by one-eighth wide.” Father Germano said the wounds “seemed to pass through the hand—the openings on both sides reaching each other.” Within the wound in each hand, he said, one could on some rare occasions see tissue that was “hard and like the head of a nail raised and detached and about an inch in diameter” (Thurston 1952, p. 53).

Not long after each appearance, the stigmata disappeared, leaving hardly a trace. Father Germano said, “As soon as the ecstasy of the Friday was over, the flow of blood from all the five wounds ceased immediately; the raw flesh healed; the lacerated tissues healed too, and the following day, or at latest on the Sunday, not a vestige remained of those deep cavities, neither at their centres, nor around their edges; the skin having grown quite uniformly with that of the uninjured part. In colour, however, there remained whitish marks” (Thurston 1952, p. 54).

Maternal effects

Some medical professionals and other scientists have long believed that a strong mental impression in a pregnant woman can influence the developing body of the child within her womb. For example, if a woman sees someone with an injured foot and then constantly remembers this, her child might be born with a malformed foot. Such incidents are called “maternal impressions.” The view was common among the Greeks and Romans, and among European physicians until the nineteenth century (Stevenson 1992, p. 353–356). In 1890, W. C. Dabney reviewed in a medical encyclopedia 69 reports published between 1853 and 1886 documenting a close correspondence between the mother’s mental impression and the physical deformation in her child. Stevenson (1992, p. 356), describing Dabney’s conclusions, stated, “He found that defects related to errors of embryological development [such as a deformed or missing limb] tended to be associated with maternal impressions received early in pregnancy; in contrast, birthmarks and other abnormalities of the skin and hair tended to be associated with maternal impressions occurring later in pregnancy” (my interpolation). By the end of the nineteenth century, however, many physicians had given up belief in the phenomenon of maternal impressions. Dabney (1890, p. 191) offered the explanation that “thinking men came to doubt the truth of those things which they could not understand.” Such doubts became all-pervasive in the twentieth century. By this time medical science had become exclusively materialistic in its assumptions about the nature of the human organism. Stevenson (1992, p. 356) suggested that the failure of Western medical professionals to find any materialistic explanation for maternal impressions “eventually led to denial that there were any phenomena to be explained.” Nevertheless, in many parts of the world, the phenomenon of maternal impressions on children is still accepted even today.