Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lambs Hi, I'm Christian Seger. And
Speaker 1: before we get into the topic today, I just want
Speaker 1: to remind everyone you can find us on social media
Speaker 1: on Facebook, on Twitter, and untum and on tumbler. We
Speaker 1: are blow to Mind and I think all of those. Uh,
Speaker 1: And if you just do a search for Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, people find us will definitely pop up,
Speaker 1: and they can also email us questions and comments about
Speaker 1: the episode. Where below the mind at how stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com and of course the mothership is Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. Yeah, definitely make sure that
Speaker 1: you go to that site so that you can see
Speaker 1: more of the videos and blog posts and galleries and
Speaker 1: other content that we produce that go beyond the podcast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We will beam the knowledge directly into your body in
Speaker 1: the same way that that one might have the wounds
Speaker 1: of Christ lay there into their body. Yeah. I believe
Speaker 1: that the way that it works is that an angel
Speaker 1: with five wings flies over you and fires lasers from
Speaker 1: the wings into the spots of the wounds. If the
Speaker 1: paintings are any indication this seems to be the process involved.
Speaker 1: So if you couldn't guess we are going to talk
Speaker 1: about stigmata today, Yes, Yes, stigmata a topic wanting to
Speaker 1: cover here for some time and uh and it's it's
Speaker 1: indeed a very they're very deep topic. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of there's a lot of there's history, there's science,
Speaker 1: there's a religion, myth uh, iconography, there a lot of psychology, psychology,
Speaker 1: and we certainly can't do every corner of the story justice,
Speaker 1: even in a two part Yeah, I think that it's
Speaker 1: important to recognize upfront that that we are not experts
Speaker 1: in uh, certainly not experts in Catholic history, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of what we're going to talk about in
Speaker 1: the first episode is about St. Francis, who is of
Speaker 1: course beatified by the Catholic Church and one of the
Speaker 1: best known stigmatics in history, right, and he's essentially the
Speaker 1: patient zero for stigmata and uh. And he's an interesting
Speaker 1: figure from historical standpoint, but also from a biological standpoint,
Speaker 1: as we'll get into as as modern day historians look
Speaker 1: back at the records and the accounts and try to
Speaker 1: figure out what might have been going on with his body.
Speaker 1: Uh from a medical standpoint, Yeah, he lived a really
Speaker 1: interesting life. And you know, we can go through that
Speaker 1: sort of chronologically today, but I think it would probably
Speaker 1: help if we start off by just explaining stigmata as
Speaker 1: a concept, uh, and and what it is, where the
Speaker 1: idea of it came from, and and and how it
Speaker 1: resonates with culture today. Indeed. Yeah, So to start off,
Speaker 1: the word itself, stigmata comes from the Greek stigma uh.
Speaker 1: And this refers to the brand with which slaves and
Speaker 1: criminals in ancient Greece and Rome were marked. Hence our
Speaker 1: verb stigmatized to mark as with a brand disgrace. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you are, what how does that
Speaker 1: work in terms of stigma stigmatization of the eye Is
Speaker 1: that there's a mark on your actual eye? Ah? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, if I wonder, I wonder what the
Speaker 1: connection is there, but I bet it's got to be
Speaker 1: something like that. Given the synonym with markings. I know
Speaker 1: that if you are suffering the the Catholic stigmata um,
Speaker 1: your eye doctor will probably be able to do nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: They're useless in that sense. They can't even stop the bleeding.
Speaker 1: It's true. It's true. So the Catholic stigmata, which a
Speaker 1: number of you've probably at least absorbed through art or
Speaker 1: pop culture. You know, we're talking about the physical manifestation
Speaker 1: of the wounds of Jesus Christ crucified. Yeah, specifically the
Speaker 1: two wounds in the hand. They're usually found in the palm,
Speaker 1: which is important. We'll come back to that later. There's
Speaker 1: two wounds in the feet as well. These are from
Speaker 1: the nails that were hammered through Christ's hands and feet.
Speaker 1: And then there's a fifth wound that a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't recognize, which is on his side. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was on his right or left side,
Speaker 1: but he was uh lanced or speared by I believe
Speaker 1: a Roman soldier as he was carrying the cross. I
Speaker 1: believe it's the right side at least in various paintings,
Speaker 1: but I'm not I'm not sure of it if there's
Speaker 1: a definite right versus left, you know, cannonized. So beyond
Speaker 1: the horrific nature of being crucified, hanging from across bleeding
Speaker 1: from those wounds, he also had a pretty massive wound
Speaker 1: in his side, according to the Bible and other stories,
Speaker 1: uh that that was bleeding and would have killed them anyways, presumably.
Speaker 1: And then there are a number of sort of add
Speaker 1: on stigmata wounds you can throw in the pop up,
Speaker 1: like the lacerations on the back from being scourged, crown
Speaker 1: of thorns, fro thorn's, sometimes bleeding eyes are thrown in,
Speaker 1: as well as kind of uh, that's that's more of
Speaker 1: a garden of a cassemine, kind of a thing that
Speaker 1: would be on top of everything else that would be rough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, they really laid into the man. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot to choose from, but certainly the the big five,
Speaker 1: the five wounds, those are the ones that typically in
Speaker 1: order to be actually recognized I believe by the Church
Speaker 1: to it has to be those five wounds. Right now,
Speaker 1: I do want to point out that stigmata, at least
Speaker 1: as we're discussing it here, it's not necessarily a purely
Speaker 1: Christian phenomenon. According to Pamela ray heat M d Uh
Speaker 1: in her work A Mind Matter Interaction or a View
Speaker 1: of Historical Reports, Theories and Research, she says there are
Speaker 1: a few accounts of stigmata among Muslims and Hindus. With
Speaker 1: Muslims the alleged stigmata resemble the battle wounds of the
Speaker 1: prophet uh and I've personally read accounts of one if
Speaker 1: twenty one century Indian thinker, philosopher ug christa Mutri undergoing
Speaker 1: supposedly undergoing physical transformations, the swelling swellings around the chakras
Speaker 1: in various discolorations that match up with Hindu iconography. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think it's important to acknowledge that at the top, because,
Speaker 1: as we're going to find throughout the discussion today, there
Speaker 1: are multiple possible origins for stigmata. And one could potentially
Speaker 1: be self mutilation, which might explain why in different religions
Speaker 1: there at different points the body. Another could potentially be
Speaker 1: psycho sematic, which would also explain that if you were
Speaker 1: hyper fixated in your mind on specific points of your body,
Speaker 1: then there's a possibility that lesions could appear. Well, it
Speaker 1: hasn't been proven or not, but there's there's evidence that
Speaker 1: that might be the case in some of these stigmatic cases.
Speaker 1: And then of course, lasers from an angel right, which
Speaker 1: I believe that most of the research refers to as
Speaker 1: uh de ific intervention. And you know, we won't spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time on that one, but it is
Speaker 1: interesting to sort of think about it as non theologians.
Speaker 1: Uh you know why why how that would work with
Speaker 1: the metaphysics. Like, the best I could think of is
Speaker 1: that it's sort of like you have you have the
Speaker 1: the the birth and death of Christ is kind of
Speaker 1: a patch that's applied to the existing reality. So reality
Speaker 1: comes out like a game comes out, and there's some
Speaker 1: problems with him. God says, I, really, I have got
Speaker 1: to put out a big patch to fix fix this right,
Speaker 1: save humanity. But before I get into that, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess we should obviously just do a quick run
Speaker 1: through of how crucifixion and Jesus fit factors into the
Speaker 1: Christian and its particularly the Catholic worldview. So to summarize,
Speaker 1: you have the basic notion here that God takes human
Speaker 1: form in the guise of Jesus. He's tortured, killed on
Speaker 1: a Roman crucifix for the ideas that he spread, and
Speaker 1: it's through this execution and resurrection of God incarnate that
Speaker 1: humanity is redeemed. So God suffers bodily death so that
Speaker 1: humans might know bodily immortality. Yeah, and and I think
Speaker 1: that that's important to consider when we're talking about later
Speaker 1: stigmatics who think of themselves as also suffering for the
Speaker 1: sins of mankind. Um, and I I think that I
Speaker 1: have a little bit of a logic problem with connecting
Speaker 1: the dots there. For the stigmatics I get, I get
Speaker 1: the Christian origin story and believe it or not. You know,
Speaker 1: I I I grew up going to church reading the
Speaker 1: Bible a lot, and UM, I have somewhat of an
Speaker 1: affinity for those stories. I wouldn't call myself an atheist
Speaker 1: per se, but I here's how I feel about the
Speaker 1: whole stigmadeling. I don't necessarily believe that it's de ific
Speaker 1: intervention going on here, but I will. I think I
Speaker 1: believe that the people, most of the people who are
Speaker 1: affected by stigmata believe it themselves. I believe that they believe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's definitely some some fakery in there at times
Speaker 1: with some of the stigmatics. Oh yeah, there's cases that
Speaker 1: will come across where people were called out on it
Speaker 1: and it was discovered that they were you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was self mutilation. Yeah. Now, I mean I
Speaker 1: like to look at it from from from different vantage points,
Speaker 1: and of course we invite listeners to do that. As well.
Speaker 1: But but when I try and put myself in the
Speaker 1: mind of the of the really devoute believer and trying
Speaker 1: to think, well, how would this work in the metaphysics
Speaker 1: of Christianity From a purely non theologian standpoint, I think
Speaker 1: of screen burn You know, the old phenomenon where you'd
Speaker 1: have your tell your computer screen. You leave some text
Speaker 1: up there too long and it gets burned into the screen, right,
Speaker 1: like the reason why we have screensavers. Yeah, that it's
Speaker 1: essentially your screensavers, not up on your your faith. And
Speaker 1: so you're so into thinking about Christ and UH and
Speaker 1: the iconography of Christ and holiness and and then it
Speaker 1: ends up manifesting in your hands body or a more
Speaker 1: elaborate version that came to mind is that it's uh
Speaker 1: like a pre christ world. Is is like a game
Speaker 1: that comes out. It comes out a little too early.
Speaker 1: A lot of work went into creating this video game,
Speaker 1: but there are some problems. So God says, all right,
Speaker 1: I've got to apply a patch to this thing. So
Speaker 1: it releases the patch. But the patch, as we all know,
Speaker 1: you apply a big patch to a game, it just
Speaker 1: creates more a little bugs. And so maybe the stigmata
Speaker 1: is is kind of a bug in the game post patch. Uh,
Speaker 1: that is just a sort of an accident. Right. It's
Speaker 1: difficult because within the the actual I want to call
Speaker 1: it Laura, as if we're like referring to some kind
Speaker 1: of supernatural vampire story here. But like within the text
Speaker 1: of the Bible, there's only one mention of stigmata, and
Speaker 1: even that is fairly vague. I believe it's in Galashians, uh,
Speaker 1: and it's in reference to the apostle Paul, but it's
Speaker 1: not entirely known if he's actually talking about stigmata the
Speaker 1: way that he refers to it, that uh, manifesting on
Speaker 1: his body is the marks of Christ. Indeed, indeed, and
Speaker 1: just to put that in the in the context of
Speaker 1: the timeline here, Paul would have lived five c E. Right,
Speaker 1: And the exact quote, I'm sorry I didn't have it earlier,
Speaker 1: was I bear in my body the marks of the
Speaker 1: Lord Jesus. Now does by marks does he mean literally
Speaker 1: the wounds through the hands and feet inside or does
Speaker 1: he mean something else, maybe a tattoo, Maybe it's metaphorical.
Speaker 1: We'll get into that later. But I believe that it's
Speaker 1: best if we start off with what you referred to
Speaker 1: as patient zero with St. Francis, who was really like
Speaker 1: the case that that that has the most not evidence
Speaker 1: because you know, it happened what eight hundred nine d
Speaker 1: years ago, but there's a lot of documentation about it
Speaker 1: and and um discussion about the wounds. Yeah, he lived
Speaker 1: close to eight hundred years ago, and he's he's definitely
Speaker 1: the trends thattor, this is the patient zero for stigmata um.
Speaker 1: And you know, modern historians continue to sort through early
Speaker 1: biographies to make sense of the terms used in the
Speaker 1: accounts given uh and in some cases make an argument
Speaker 1: for the stigmata's roots in natural world illness rather than
Speaker 1: supernatural miracle, which will we'll get into. But yeah, Francis
Speaker 1: today is known as the patron saint of animals in
Speaker 1: the environment, the father of the Franciscan Order. He was
Speaker 1: born one died in twelve twenty six and the key
Speaker 1: event in his life for the purposes of discussing stigmata
Speaker 1: is that late in his life he's on the slopes
Speaker 1: of Italy's Mount Laverna and he's visited by this fiery
Speaker 1: vision of a crucified Christ flames twisting into the forum
Speaker 1: of Sarah wings. And according to the lore, uh, this
Speaker 1: is such an tense mystical experience that it inflicts the
Speaker 1: wounds of the crucifixion right onto Francis hands and feet,
Speaker 1: whereas it depicted in some of the paintings that we
Speaker 1: were looking at laser beams from a fire. That's what
Speaker 1: it looks like in the in these images. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and what's interesting about this is that there is
Speaker 1: some documentation that says that there was someone with Francis
Speaker 1: when this happened. And I believe the understanding was that
Speaker 1: they didn't see this, uh, this angelic manifestatious manifestation in
Speaker 1: the way that Francis described to them, but that they
Speaker 1: did see him, you know, kind of fall in pain
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden have these wounds. But makes
Speaker 1: sense that someone would be with him, right, because Francis
Speaker 1: was not a well man, and he was fairly infirm
Speaker 1: and by late life I think he lived into his
Speaker 1: forties maybe, so even for the time, he was only
Speaker 1: a little bit older than us. Yeah. So if he
Speaker 1: was to say, hey, I'm gonna go out into the
Speaker 1: wilderness and pray a little bit, they would have said, well,
Speaker 1: pulled on, let's send. Yeah. So Francis is uh kind
Speaker 1: of interesting before he became, you know, the major figure
Speaker 1: of the Franciscan order because he was you know, he
Speaker 1: came from I don't know about like wealth, but he
Speaker 1: was what we would probably referred to as middle class today. Uh,
Speaker 1: and left that to go to war. Uh. He was
Speaker 1: in one war, was a prisoner of war, and it
Speaker 1: was described I think it's accurate to say that he
Speaker 1: was fairly traumatized by that experience. Yeah, that was the
Speaker 1: gist I got from the sources we're looking at. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he came back, had some epiphanies about life,
Speaker 1: you know, as would be expected after an experience like that,
Speaker 1: was sent to war again, and it was on his
Speaker 1: way to the second War that he had a vision correct. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this is where accounts get kind of complicated, because
Speaker 1: some accounts seemed to indicate that he just either felt
Speaker 1: unwell or he suffered dreams about becoming unwell. It depends
Speaker 1: on who he asked, but any rate, he definitely had
Speaker 1: a change of heart. Uh. And maybe there was a
Speaker 1: there was an ailment angle to that as well. There
Speaker 1: could be, yeah, because he again, like he suffered illness
Speaker 1: even from a fairly young age in life. Uh And
Speaker 1: but basically the vision was that he shouldn't go to war,
Speaker 1: that he should go back devote his life to the
Speaker 1: teachings of Christ and and basically modeling on the life
Speaker 1: of Christ. Uh And there was a point where he
Speaker 1: went to Rome. Uh and what he took to doing
Speaker 1: was begging with the poor around Rome and becoming uh
Speaker 1: becoming a pauper, becoming homeless, essentially an understanding life from
Speaker 1: the streets. Yeah. And in twelve or six, which is
Speaker 1: just you know, in the in the years immediately following
Speaker 1: his his vision initial vision in which he gave up war,
Speaker 1: he begins working with lepers, which and I mean working
Speaker 1: in close confines, with living with them, eating with them,
Speaker 1: kissing them, etcetera. Yeah, I'd like to stop there for
Speaker 1: a second. So I have a personal experience. When I
Speaker 1: was fifteen years old, I went on a trip to
Speaker 1: Katmandu in Nepal and it was it was there was
Speaker 1: like a tour service. I believe, it wasn't fancy or anything,
Speaker 1: but there was a guide who took us around Catmandu
Speaker 1: and we did various activities. And at the time, this
Speaker 1: was in the early nineties, Uh, there were plenty of
Speaker 1: lepers around Catman Do and it was my first experience
Speaker 1: even with hearing the term, much less seeing in real life.
Speaker 1: It is a horrible affliction and it's um, extremely sad.
Speaker 1: But the idea that he was, as you described, in
Speaker 1: such close contact with these lepers of Rome and other
Speaker 1: other towns around Italy mainly, Uh, it just it just
Speaker 1: goes to show you, you know, what kind of a
Speaker 1: man he was, how dedicated he was to to the
Speaker 1: teachings of the church. Yeah, I mean, especially when you
Speaker 1: think you think about how m complicated the idea of
Speaker 1: physical ailment was at the time, because it's all tied
Speaker 1: up with ideas about moral failing and sin as well.
Speaker 1: So so there's the idea that not only is he
Speaker 1: working with the disease, he's working with people that are
Speaker 1: perhaps spiritually impure. Um. But again it's very much in
Speaker 1: keeping with this, uh, this this new purpose in his life, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he did not worry about being I guess tainted would
Speaker 1: be the word physically or spiritually. So some other high
Speaker 1: points from his life. Twelve thirteen twelve fourteen, he had
Speaker 1: to aboard a journey to Morocco cut out he cut
Speaker 1: out in Spain due to quote prolonged illness in which
Speaker 1: he lost his speech for three days, uh twelve seventeen.
Speaker 1: He suffered from court and fever, but accounts differ on
Speaker 1: whether this was an actual illness or a metaphorical fever
Speaker 1: such as a temptation, uh, you know vision experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the resource that um we read from that
Speaker 1: that accounts on this actually breaks down, you know, nowadays
Speaker 1: when we referred to Corten fever, it's it's synonymous with malaria,
Speaker 1: I believe. But what they were saying was that in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, you know, obviously medicine wasn't where it
Speaker 1: is now, and that there were different types of quote
Speaker 1: unquote fevers basically that they applied to dozens of diseases,
Speaker 1: and I think I think they've listed it as like
Speaker 1: seventy seven different types of fever were possible at the time,
Speaker 1: but there were four categories of them, and the way
Speaker 1: that they categorized them was how often you had the fever.
Speaker 1: So if you had it daily, it was Quotitian, if
Speaker 1: you had it every other day, it was Tertian, and
Speaker 1: if you had it every third day, it was corton.
Speaker 1: And the fourth one was continuous. You just had it
Speaker 1: all the time, all right, And then of course you
Speaker 1: could just be saying I had a fever and yeah,
Speaker 1: a mystical experience exactly. So it's really hard to tell
Speaker 1: what they meant by this, but we're fairly certain it
Speaker 1: wasn't malaria that they were referring to that they meant.
Speaker 1: Around twelve twenty, he begins that you experience constant eye pain,
Speaker 1: constant peers flowing out of his eyes, which gets back
Speaker 1: to that, uh, your reference to stigmatics, who believed from
Speaker 1: the eyes? Yeah, indeed, and that is the year that
Speaker 1: he suffers the stigmata at Alverna. And after this, it's
Speaker 1: it's important to note it's not just a matter of
Speaker 1: these um uh, these these wounds or sores manifesting on
Speaker 1: his hands and feet. He's experiencing pain all over his body.
Speaker 1: At this point, he's he has using wounds or sores.
Speaker 1: He becomes unable to walk, right. So this is something
Speaker 1: that I wanted to point out too, is the being
Speaker 1: unable to walk thing could be a symptom of one
Speaker 1: of the many other illnesses that he was exposed to,
Speaker 1: or let's let's say the stigmata happened and his feet
Speaker 1: were pierced through as if they had been pierced by nails.
Speaker 1: I imagine what walking would be difficult for any stigmatic Yes,
Speaker 1: I would think so? Um so, I yeah, I'm kind
Speaker 1: of wondering why that isn't a more common symptom that
Speaker 1: we hear about as we, you know, later talk about
Speaker 1: other stigmatics in history. Seems like they would all be
Speaker 1: confined to a wheelchair, crutches or something. The year after that, twelve,
Speaker 1: he receives treatment for his eye pains. And when we
Speaker 1: say treatment, we're talking about the cauterization of veins from
Speaker 1: years to eyebrows due to the constant accumulation of fluid.
Speaker 1: And this was a standard medical procedure of the day. Uh.
Speaker 1: But he also he felt no pain when he allegedly
Speaker 1: when this was administered to him. And so by twelve
Speaker 1: twenty six, he's almost completely blind. He has a wasted body,
Speaker 1: his skin is darkened, he's vomiting blood, suspected liver and
Speaker 1: spleen ailments, headaches, and that same year he dies at
Speaker 1: age forty four, after a life spent traveling off in
Speaker 1: far and travel in poverty, working with the sick, including
Speaker 1: those with leopards. So, in summary, Francis was a guy
Speaker 1: who uh lived in poverty on purpose, so subsequently probably
Speaker 1: had poor nutritional practices. Uh. He had a history of
Speaker 1: exposure to many diseases, especially leprosy, and uh he was
Speaker 1: debilitated by these diseases through probably the last decade of
Speaker 1: his life. Yeah, so we have we have plenty of
Speaker 1: stuff to work with when trying to look for a
Speaker 1: purely biological explanation for why this guy would have experienced
Speaker 1: what we would come to know as the stigmata. A
Speaker 1: couple other facts about Francis I'd like to throw out
Speaker 1: there before we dive into the disease part. Francis, did
Speaker 1: you know this He was the first person to create
Speaker 1: a Nativity scene. Yeah, apparently he was the one who
Speaker 1: had the idea for that around Christmas time, you know,
Speaker 1: replicating the Nativity. Uh. And it was only two years
Speaker 1: after he died that he became a saying. He was
Speaker 1: pronounced to saying by the Pope. Yeah, fast turned around.
Speaker 1: You don't get back today, right, I would say that
Speaker 1: that's I don't know, Pope John Paul. But it was
Speaker 1: pretty quick for him. But even still I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't think it was within two years. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: also I think important to note about Francis that most
Speaker 1: of the sources we were looking at, uh, there was
Speaker 1: no indication that he made any personal claims to have
Speaker 1: suffered or experienced some sort of supernatural Christ like wound
Speaker 1: in his body. Yeah. That's what's really interesting about this
Speaker 1: is a lot of the accounts and the research that
Speaker 1: looks into the various evidence is that Francis himself was
Speaker 1: very reluctant to talk about the stigmata UH, and in fact,
Speaker 1: you know, didn't want it to be publicized would be
Speaker 1: the wrong word because they didn't exactly have mass media then,
Speaker 1: but he didn't want it to be something that was
Speaker 1: spoken of. He was actually worried that if it was
Speaker 1: talked about, that his um that he you know, would
Speaker 1: be in trouble, that the grace of God that was
Speaker 1: stowed upon him would be taken away from him. UM.
Speaker 1: So he tried to hide the wounds. And there's references
Speaker 1: to him being ill towards the end of his life,
Speaker 1: you know, laying in bed, uh, monks tending to him,
Speaker 1: and you know, one I think was like maybe washing
Speaker 1: him or or or reaching to to uh move his
Speaker 1: torso and touched the wound in his side, and he,
Speaker 1: you know, gasped out in pain. But he did not
Speaker 1: want this monk to say anything about it. It was
Speaker 1: not Francis's idea. I think if we were going to
Speaker 1: say Francis faked this whole thing so that he seemed
Speaker 1: like he was a saint, right, it doesn't match up
Speaker 1: with the um the stories of the man and other
Speaker 1: occasions that he did not seem like the kind of
Speaker 1: person with the quality of character that would make up
Speaker 1: a story like this, because he didn't even want other
Speaker 1: people to know about it. Yeah, it wasn't until October three,
Speaker 1: twelve six that we know that was the first written
Speaker 1: account of Saint France just having experienced some sort of
Speaker 1: miraculous wounds. Uh. And this comes to us from the
Speaker 1: writings of brother Elias. He says, and is that? And
Speaker 1: now I announced to you a great joy, a new miracle.
Speaker 1: The world has never heard of such a miracle except
Speaker 1: in the Son of God, who is Christ, our Lord.
Speaker 1: A little while before his death, our brother and father
Speaker 1: appeared crucified, bearing in his body the five wounds, which
Speaker 1: are truly the stigmata of Christ his hands and feet,
Speaker 1: where as if punctured by nails, pierced on both sides
Speaker 1: and had scars that were the black color of nails.
Speaker 1: His side appeared pierced by a lance and often gave
Speaker 1: forth droplets of blood. And it's important to note that
Speaker 1: line about a new miracle, um, you know, an exceptional miracle,
Speaker 1: because it it drives home that this was this was
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful thing to claim about somebody. This was
Speaker 1: This was a potentially dangerous idea at the time, absolutely
Speaker 1: because uh and in fact, there were you know, other
Speaker 1: monks that doubted francis Is authenticity with this and a
Speaker 1: I believe the way that they described it was that
Speaker 1: he was trying to be a quote new God. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that like there was the iconography surrounding this event
Speaker 1: and specifically stigmatics was questionable because it was drawing attention
Speaker 1: away from Christianity itself. Yeah, I mean, because because the
Speaker 1: initial reaction would be like, are you trying to single
Speaker 1: white female? What's going on? As Arnold I. Davidson points
Speaker 1: out in his article Miracles of Bodily Transformation or How
Speaker 1: Saint Francis received the Stigmata, he said that Francis. Stigmata
Speaker 1: was written off at the time as we just saw
Speaker 1: as a unique miracle, indeed a miracle greater than any
Speaker 1: other miracle. And even then, to counter doubts and denials
Speaker 1: in the day at that time required nine papal bulls. Um,
Speaker 1: so I have some you know, some big authoritatory statements,
Speaker 1: some big press releases got down from from the pope's
Speaker 1: office saying no, this is the real, this is for real. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and from my reading it sounds like, um, the popes
Speaker 1: at the time of his life had met with him
Speaker 1: personally on several occasions too, so they were well aware
Speaker 1: of this. It wasn't as if he was just you know,
Speaker 1: someone who is rather low on the echelon of the
Speaker 1: Catholic hierarchy. And various other accounts in the time of Stigmata,
Speaker 1: we were often just completely thrown out, just rejected as
Speaker 1: as you know, scandals or even potentially heretical, because the
Speaker 1: basic idea is you're presenting France is not only as saintly,
Speaker 1: but but almost as this new Christ. Yeah. And we
Speaker 1: should say here too that uh, it's somewhat misleading to
Speaker 1: describe St. Francis as the first stigmatic because there were
Speaker 1: between Christ's death and between St. Francis's life there were
Speaker 1: cases of quote unquote stigmata. But we'll get into it
Speaker 1: later about whether that actually meant wounds as we come
Speaker 1: to understand them as being stigmatic or not. Uh, it
Speaker 1: could mean many other things based on the literature at
Speaker 1: the time. One thing I wanted to talk about with St.
Speaker 1: Francis is um the description of his stigmata by Thomas
Speaker 1: Solano in this book that he wrote about St. Francis,
Speaker 1: The Life of St. Francis from eight I think you
Speaker 1: referenced this as well, and then notes the the way
Speaker 1: that he described the wounds in the hands was not
Speaker 1: just that they were holes like we would imagine from
Speaker 1: like a horror movie or something, but that you could
Speaker 1: actually see the points of the nails protruding from the flesh.
Speaker 1: That they were like the nail points were pushing up
Speaker 1: through the flesh and black underneath, as if you know,
Speaker 1: there were like ghost nails there. Uh. And that I
Speaker 1: mean we think of stigmata today as being a kind
Speaker 1: of supernatural, scary type symbolism. You know that you would
Speaker 1: have you would see in a horror movie, But I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that that seems so much scarier to me.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm surprised that some some horror director hasn't
Speaker 1: glommed onto that yet and pulled that into the content
Speaker 1: that they've produced, because it's just the idea of these
Speaker 1: permanent nails just kind of just barely pushing up under
Speaker 1: your skin. It's cruciating. Yeah, and it's the important to
Speaker 1: hear as well that some of the accounts vary on
Speaker 1: exactly what the wounds of St. Francis consisted, often in
Speaker 1: the same way that the stigmatic traditions to follow. You'd
Speaker 1: see everything from you know, slight blemishes, um and little
Speaker 1: sores counting stigmata to actual holes or the manifestation of nails. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just like purple marks in the palms of
Speaker 1: your hands. All right, you know, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: When we come back, we will jump into some of
Speaker 1: the various disease explanations for the stigmata experience by St. Francis.
Speaker 1: Of all right, we're back, so we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: pick through some of the possible disease explanations here for St. Francis.
Speaker 1: Real quick. We mentioned that he traveled into some of
Speaker 1: the swampy territory in Italy had turned back from going
Speaker 1: to Morocco. So there's one possibility that he suffered from malaria. Now,
Speaker 1: to touch back upon what we talked about earlier, quartaine
Speaker 1: fever and malaria sort of understood as different things at
Speaker 1: the time, but still he may have contracted malaria. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The the late historian Dr Edward Frederick Hartung made out
Speaker 1: a strong case for malignant malaria as being the the
Speaker 1: cause of these uh, these these bodily manifestation um, though
Speaker 1: rarely encountered with today's treatment. One complication of malignant malaria
Speaker 1: infection is the purplish hemorrhage of blood through the skin,
Speaker 1: also known is papa uh. And what's more, propera usually
Speaker 1: distribute symmetrically according to the heart, tongue, on the hands,
Speaker 1: and on the feet. So is it possible that these
Speaker 1: supernatural wounds were mere hemorrhages caused by malaria. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: propara or as I pronounced it, I think properah are
Speaker 1: just one of many types of lesions that can form
Speaker 1: as a result of the various diseases we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about today, and they're they're the larger of the
Speaker 1: categories of legions that can form on your body as
Speaker 1: a result. Now, it's worth pointing out that there's some
Speaker 1: problems with the with the malaria argument. According to Johann
Speaker 1: shops Line and Daniel P. Selmasti, it was until the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century the physicians could distinguish between the fevers of
Speaker 1: malaria and other fevers. The true cause of malaria wasn't
Speaker 1: known until the nineteenth century. The word malaria didn't even
Speaker 1: exist until the six so we we can't be for sure.
Speaker 1: And also malaria doesn't fact the bones. And then as
Speaker 1: we'll get into uh shortly, uh, there's some skeletal evidence
Speaker 1: that seems to point in the direction of a particular ailment. Right,
Speaker 1: that's somewhat important for as evidence forensic evidence in the
Speaker 1: case of Saint Francis um other possibilities wants. Some have
Speaker 1: argued tuberculosis um and it's certainly a statistical possibility, but
Speaker 1: the chances are slim since it didn't become a huge
Speaker 1: issue um until in Europe, until the urbanization of the
Speaker 1: sixteenth through nineteen centuries. Yeah, and one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things about the tuberculosis argument is that some sources, you know,
Speaker 1: after his death suggested that it's possible that he contracted
Speaker 1: tuberculosis from his mother because his mother was from France
Speaker 1: and it was more common there. Tuberculosis was more common
Speaker 1: in France. Um, but most people criticize this as not
Speaker 1: being legitimate claim. Is you know that that's just just like, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's possible, but is it Is it
Speaker 1: really likely, especially compared with some of the other candidates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's also speculation that he was a mnemic as well,
Speaker 1: but again this is all after his life. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence of either of these things in the actual written
Speaker 1: literature of the time of people who lived around St. Francis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is largely all we have to go on. So
Speaker 1: others have made cases for brucellosis, humophilia, herpie simplex. But
Speaker 1: the really convincing one, the one we ended up spending
Speaker 1: a lot more time on, is leprosy, because again, he
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with leopards, living with them,
Speaker 1: eating with them, coming into visual physical contact with them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and is you know, the ethos of his life was
Speaker 1: to basically live like them, you know, to take on
Speaker 1: the same pains that they had taken on. So it
Speaker 1: seems to me that in his mind that contracting leprosy
Speaker 1: was was not you know, a punishment per se, It
Speaker 1: was part of the life that he wanted to lead,
Speaker 1: caring for the ill and for the poor. And there
Speaker 1: was a lot of it at the time too. It
Speaker 1: was common in medieval Europe. It was common in thirteenth
Speaker 1: century Italy, and there were six leper houses in a
Speaker 1: c c alone, you know. Interesting a side note about
Speaker 1: leprosy in in Europe. Leprosy and Europe declined significantly after
Speaker 1: the Black Plague of through three, right, And I believe
Speaker 1: the idea there is that because lepers were already susceptible
Speaker 1: to illness and weak, that they were you know, largely
Speaker 1: killed off by the plague, almost entirely, right, so that
Speaker 1: there there wasn't a lot of opportunity to contract it otherwise. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and and there's also a case to be
Speaker 1: made that the process of segregating lepers actually decreased transmission
Speaker 1: increases in dietary vitamin C gave some degree of protection
Speaker 1: against it. And since leprosy into NTB are both caused
Speaker 1: by different species of the same bacterium, the rise of TB,
Speaker 1: as we discussed that comes with the organization might have
Speaker 1: provided protection against leprosy due to cross immunity. So you
Speaker 1: have immune responses that are stimulated to fight one infection, uh,
Speaker 1: and they combat the other. And lepers often contracted TV,
Speaker 1: and those with TV seldom contracted leprosy, even in places
Speaker 1: where both were endemic. But to clarify, Francis lived almost
Speaker 1: a hundred years before the Black plague really kicked in, right,
Speaker 1: So we can't really factor black plague into it. That's
Speaker 1: what's whine. It doesn't really come up as one of
Speaker 1: the potential possibilities. But I think that does help to
Speaker 1: underline how how complicated it begins to be when you
Speaker 1: start looking back at a disease in history, because it
Speaker 1: of course doesn't exist in isolation. Yeah. Absolutely, Oh, this
Speaker 1: reminds me. There is an interesting factoid that you told
Speaker 1: me before we started recording that sort of places St.
Speaker 1: Francis in history, and we're talking about where he is
Speaker 1: in relation to the Black plague. Talk about Genghis Khan. Oh, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the year St. Francis was born two, Genghis Khan
Speaker 1: was twenty years old at the time, So that kind
Speaker 1: of gives you a little bit of a reference point, yeah,
Speaker 1: particularly if you're may be more familiar with with Asian
Speaker 1: history versus European. Alright, So the case for leprosy um.
Speaker 1: A lot of this comes from paper by Flatson and
Speaker 1: soul Mastery, who I mentioned earlier, and I'll make sure
Speaker 1: to include a link to to to that resource on
Speaker 1: the landing page of this episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot Com in case you want to check
Speaker 1: it out. But they contended what could have been going
Speaker 1: on here was that it was something known as tuberculoid leprosy. Uh.
Speaker 1: They contended to medieval physicians only understood one form of
Speaker 1: leprosy really, and that's the disfiguring lepromattis, of which we'll discuss,
Speaker 1: and they might have missed this more subtle tuberculoid kind
Speaker 1: of leprosy that that he might have had. So as
Speaker 1: like a lay person not particularly understanding these diseases up
Speaker 1: close and personal, other than my experience of seeing lepers
Speaker 1: when I was younger, I'm a mad inning that. Let's
Speaker 1: say this was the case. He had lesions on his
Speaker 1: hands and feet and maybe on his side, but he
Speaker 1: probably also had lesions across his whole body, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the the takeaway that I get I get
Speaker 1: from this, Okay. So, I mean most people out there
Speaker 1: are probably thinking of leprosy as just like digits fall off,
Speaker 1: parts of your face fall off, things like that. That's
Speaker 1: sort of the popular culture understanding of it. But these
Speaker 1: these open wounds are popping up everywhere on the body,
Speaker 1: not just it wasn't necessarily and in fact, in some
Speaker 1: of the descriptions of St. Francis that we we read
Speaker 1: for this, that they described all of the wounds on
Speaker 1: his body and the oozing sores and the pain that
Speaker 1: he was constantly in. Yeah. Now, the Greeks and Romans,
Speaker 1: they had three different terms for leprosy. There was a
Speaker 1: lepra because the scaly, non leprous skin disease, elephant titus,
Speaker 1: which was actually true leprosy, and as as well as philaresis,
Speaker 1: a parasitic roundworm infection and also loose, a condition that
Speaker 1: might link to terpuloid leprosy, described in the work of
Speaker 1: a second century Greek Christian philosopher who was not actually
Speaker 1: widely read interest in his own time and virtually unknown
Speaker 1: to thirteenth century Europe. So it's another case where there's
Speaker 1: one pocket of understanding about leprosy, but it's not even
Speaker 1: widely known at the time. Um. And you know, to
Speaker 1: further complicate things, you get overlapping terminology and medical texts
Speaker 1: available at the time that they lack the medical knowledge
Speaker 1: to properly diagnose anything other than the classic just facially
Speaker 1: disfiguring a leprosy that we've discussed here. So okay, So,
Speaker 1: like I said, I'm sort of a layperson when it
Speaker 1: comes to this. Let's go back to you mentioned bacteria
Speaker 1: as being part of leprosy, So what actually causes It's
Speaker 1: a micro bacterium, right, yeah, yeah, let's yeah, we should
Speaker 1: get down to brass tacks on that leprosy is caused
Speaker 1: by the bacteria Microbacterium lepre and it's highly infectious, easily transmitted,
Speaker 1: but only a small percentage of individuals actually thought clinically
Speaker 1: significant disease. The incubation period between five and twenty years,
Speaker 1: and the nutritional status of the infect it plays a
Speaker 1: big role in whether it actually progresses in One of
Speaker 1: the things we know about St. Francis was that he
Speaker 1: was purposely limiting his nutrition as part of his life
Speaker 1: of poverty. Yeah, he's living poor, he's he's also you know,
Speaker 1: going out in the wilderness, um, you know who often
Speaker 1: involves fasting. Yeah, something to keep Yeah, yeah, all the
Speaker 1: fasting that he did as well, that's true. I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought about that far. He definitely wasn't like taking a
Speaker 1: multi complex vitamin, No, definitely not so so. Yeah, diet
Speaker 1: affects the progress, and progress is key in lepro mattis
Speaker 1: leprosy again, they really disfiguring when the immune system is
Speaker 1: just completely overwhelmed. The full range of disfiguring and debilitating
Speaker 1: symptoms are possible. Nodules, mutilating lesions on the face, also
Speaker 1: ripheral nerve infections. And this is the you know, the
Speaker 1: one that the physicians of the day was the most
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. I didn't get up close and personal,
Speaker 1: but that was what I witnessed when I spent time
Speaker 1: in Nepal. Yeah, this is the the just the wretched,
Speaker 1: worst leprosy infection to get. But in tuberculoid leprosy, the
Speaker 1: body's immune system effectively staves off the greater infection by
Speaker 1: keeping the infestation isolated to the nerves. So you have flat,
Speaker 1: slightly discolored patches on the skin with a decreased sensation. Again. Wait,
Speaker 1: you know mentioned earlier how he supposedly did not feel
Speaker 1: the pain of his his eye treatment. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: like if you're a Game of Thrones fan, this is
Speaker 1: like what do they call it? Gray scale? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's where George Martin got the idea for that. From that,
Speaker 1: either from there or no, it would have the other
Speaker 1: timeline doesn't support it. But there was an episode of
Speaker 1: Look Around You where they covered the case of Cobb. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've not heard of this, um fabulous British comedy series
Speaker 1: with kind of science vibe to it. Be an individual
Speaker 1: whose skin was turning into rocks cobbles, and you see
Speaker 1: him and he's basically a pile of rocks setting on
Speaker 1: a sound stage talking o. Um. But anyway, pop culture, way,
Speaker 1: as we deal with these horrific ailments that have destroyed mankind.
Speaker 1: So yeah, tuberculoid leprosy, the infected nervous system UM is
Speaker 1: doing what it can to fight it off, to to
Speaker 1: keep it isolated, but it can result also in neurotic pain,
Speaker 1: decreased sensitivity in the toes and fingers. And between these
Speaker 1: two types there's borderline leprosy, which you know kind of
Speaker 1: a little bit of both, right, Uh and uh, you
Speaker 1: know we mentioned those ailes, those eye ailments. Uh, it
Speaker 1: also affects the eyes of leprosy cases involves some sort
Speaker 1: of eye issues, infection of the cranial nerves. Uh, they
Speaker 1: can cease blinking, producing in producing instance of civity to damage. Well,
Speaker 1: and not being able to blink would definitely explain why
Speaker 1: he was constantly tearing up exactly. Also direct infection of
Speaker 1: the eyes due to you know, damage from fingers, uh,
Speaker 1: damage to the tear docks, excessive tearing, puss formation, and
Speaker 1: again loss of finger digits because because again it's it's
Speaker 1: it's affecting the nervous system and causing a decreased sensitivity
Speaker 1: to toes and fingers, which in the case of someone
Speaker 1: with leprosy, can result in uh, an easier injury of
Speaker 1: those digits. So let's hone in on that for a minute.
Speaker 1: As we referenced earlier, there's evidence that Francis himself was
Speaker 1: missing digits and we know this because was it in
Speaker 1: the early eighteen hundreds. They I'm not sure if they
Speaker 1: exhumed his corps or not, but they examined his corpse
Speaker 1: and we're able to find that he was missing several digits.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Based on descriptions and and later as
Speaker 1: some actual photographs of St. Francis's skeletal remains, there's possible
Speaker 1: evidence of leprosy and some of the missing finger bones,
Speaker 1: eight of ten metacarpals, those are the closest to the palm. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you look down at your hand now are present,
Speaker 1: and only sixteen of twenty eight philangial bones those are
Speaker 1: the two outer bones of each finger. Only sixteen out
Speaker 1: of eight are present on the body. So help me
Speaker 1: to understand this for a second. Here if again, like
Speaker 1: let's go with the d I f uh interpretation here
Speaker 1: for a moment, if uh wounds had manifested in his
Speaker 1: palms and feet, as if nails had been driven through them,
Speaker 1: or even let's say, for the sake of argument, that
Speaker 1: he self mutilated and he hammered nails through his hands
Speaker 1: and feet himself, wouldn't there be evidence of that as
Speaker 1: well in the bones that they found Potentially? Yeah, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just comes down to how it would
Speaker 1: have been as Yeah, but but yeah, there was from
Speaker 1: what I was reading, there's no evidence of that from
Speaker 1: from looking at the bones there's also nothing, nothing to
Speaker 1: suggest that they were taking his relics or loss, because
Speaker 1: that's probably some people's minds with the holy dude, someone
Speaker 1: probably right, somebody's wearing a necklace of the pinky of St. Francis.
Speaker 1: And then finally from the body, there also appears to
Speaker 1: be an enlargement of nutrient for amina openings and bones
Speaker 1: for nourishing blood vessels that could be possible evidence of
Speaker 1: leprosy having ravaged body. Okay, so if we review these
Speaker 1: diseases that we spoke about about possibilities, We talked about malaria,
Speaker 1: and talked about tuberculosis and leprosy, leprosy, there's a strong
Speaker 1: case to be made. There seems to be a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence pointing that way, both in the literature and
Speaker 1: in actually looking at his body, that he had contracted
Speaker 1: leprosy from the many years of working with the sick.
Speaker 1: He was probably a leper himself. It sounds like for
Speaker 1: almost a decade, maybe longer, because he had been ill
Speaker 1: even before. In some cases there's there's accounts of his
Speaker 1: illness before he even you know, took a vow of poverty.
Speaker 1: Um maybe you know, who knows, Maybe that's why what
Speaker 1: led him to taking a vow of poverty. Was that
Speaker 1: he was what he was sick. So but at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it really seems like leprosy is
Speaker 1: the most logical explanation. I think so. But based on
Speaker 1: what we looked at, like, that's the one that seems
Speaker 1: that there's the most evidence for, and it matches up
Speaker 1: with his timeline the best. The physical evidence, what little
Speaker 1: we have seems to seems to support it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know, and again fasting poor diet nutrition it it
Speaker 1: would have made him even more susceptible to it. And
Speaker 1: he was. He was not a well man for most
Speaker 1: of his life anyway. Now, this isn't a discount that
Speaker 1: this was a pretty saintly dude, as I would put it. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, it sounds like from all accounts
Speaker 1: that he was the real deal. He was genuinely very
Speaker 1: uh generous man. Uh and who did live his life
Speaker 1: by the teachings that he followed. Um. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that the de ific intervention was a result
Speaker 1: of what we think of as his stigmata today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, you look back on it, and I mean,
Speaker 1: on one level, you can sort of look at the stigmata,
Speaker 1: the holy stigmata that the tradition that follows is kind
Speaker 1: of a pr campaign because you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: leprosy was seen as as a disease of the soul.
Speaker 1: It's not the kind of thing a holy man would have.
Speaker 1: So to heal with this juxtaposition, you have to come
Speaker 1: up with a mystical interpretation of what's happening. Why. It
Speaker 1: comes down to, like, why do bad things happen to
Speaker 1: good people? Why? Why does something this horrible happen to
Speaker 1: somebody who's doing such good work in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you say, well, maybe it's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's exactly Yeah, he's carrying the the he's carrying
Speaker 1: the marks of Christ, who was also you know, wounded
Speaker 1: in service to mankind. Yeah, that could be definitely the
Speaker 1: way that is interpreted, especially because all of the research
Speaker 1: that I saw, there was never a mention by any
Speaker 1: of the other clergy that Francis was a leper. There
Speaker 1: was just a mention of his various illnesses and the
Speaker 1: symptoms that he had for you know, many years, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, you know, naturally we can never know
Speaker 1: for certain about any of this um but you know,
Speaker 1: when you look at this, this, uh, the supernatural explanation.
Speaker 1: When you look at the leprosy explanation there, you could
Speaker 1: argue they're kind of shades of the same thing, because
Speaker 1: presumably this, you know, the creator God in this scenario
Speaker 1: would have sent the Sarah, who sent the Sarah would
Speaker 1: have also created the protozoans responsible for the malaria or
Speaker 1: the or the or the the bacteria that caused the leprosy.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, in Francis seems to suggest as
Speaker 1: much himself. Again he he never actually talked about his uh,
Speaker 1: you know, any mystical wounds, as we already mentioned. Right,
Speaker 1: he didn't flaunt it, right, but but but here's just
Speaker 1: a little something that he said, uh in in the
Speaker 1: Little Flowers of St. Francis, he says, my dear son,
Speaker 1: be patient, because the weaknesses of the body are given
Speaker 1: to us in this world by God for the salvation
Speaker 1: of the soul. So they are of great merit when
Speaker 1: they are born patiently. So I mean, ultimately, you have
Speaker 1: a dude that suffers from leprosy working with lepers uh
Speaker 1: in the name of God. And you know, if that's
Speaker 1: if that's the actual explanation, if that's actually what happened
Speaker 1: instead of some supernatural explanation. It seems to me to
Speaker 1: be perfectly in keeping with that with the values of
Speaker 1: that faith. Now we've taken a look at patient zero.
Speaker 1: This is the most I don't know popular isn't the
Speaker 1: right word I would use, but well known example of
Speaker 1: stigmata and history, and we've discussed two possibilities for its
Speaker 1: disease or deific interve and intervention. Uh. In the second
Speaker 1: part of this episode, we're going to talk about to
Speaker 1: other possibilities. There's psychosomatic possibilities and then there's also the
Speaker 1: possibility of self mutilation. Right, so we'll we'll get into
Speaker 1: the psychology and the science of those topics in the
Speaker 1: next episode. In the meantime, be sure to check out
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll
Speaker 1: find all of our podcast episodes, videos, blog post links
Speaker 1: out to those social media accounts, as well as the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode, which will include links to
Speaker 1: related content. So outside outside resources of note and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you know a cool imager too. And again, if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us, were available
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumbler, and you can email us
Speaker 1: at Blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot com