Medicine: St. Francis’ Stigmata

The long record of the short life of St. Francis of Assisi is full of his physical ailments. But not until lately did any doctor of medicine have the interest, ambition, leisure and opportunity to collate all the Saint’s recorded symptoms and from them make a diagnosis of what troubled the holy man. Dr. Edward Frederick Hartung of Manhattan concludes that St. Francis suffered grievously from an eye infection contracted in Egypt and at the age of 45 died of malignant malaria contracted in swampy Italy. Dr. Hartung’s data appeared last week in the Annals of Medical History.

St. Francis’ eye ailment probably was trachoma, an ancient Egyptian affliction. For it St. Francis’ physicians applied eye bindings, salves, plasters and urina virginis pueri, the sovereign eye wash which later became the favorite collyrium of that great medieval Spanish ophthalmologist who became Pope John XXI. In final resort the doctors applied hot irons to the Saint’s face.

Recognizing the complications of St. Francis’ malaria, however, fills Historian Hartung with greater pride. The malaria was the quartan type and gave the Saint a chill every four days during the last twelve years of his life. No doctor attempted to treat this disease. St. Francis’ stomach, spleen and liver were infected, causing him great anguish. He developed those other signs of malignant malaria, dropsy and hemorrhages.

And one day, while on a lonely mountain, the Stigmata of the Crucifixion glowed darkly on St. Francis’ hands and feet. Although no medical realist has ever before been able to confute satisfactorily the Miracle of the Stigmata, Historian Hartung brashly declares:

“There is one complication of quartan malaria not seen frequently today, but occasionally met with in the past before the advent of adequate treatment. That is purpura [purplish hemorrhage of blood into the skin]. We know that purpura occurs as a complication of malaria, that it is usually distributed symmetrically, that its usual location is on the hands and feet, and that it appears as ovoid, bluish, at times slightly elevated spots.”