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.
Stevenson (1997) reviewed 50 cases of maternal impressions. For example, Sylvia Hirst Ewing believed she was a reincarnation of a deceased woman named Julia Ford. Ford had a small hole in her skin near the middle of her right eye. Sylvia Ewing had a similar cavity. It would sometimes exude pus, or mucus, or a tearlike liquid. When she became pregnant, Sylvia Ewing constantly worried that her child would be born with a similar disfiguring hole. The child, Calvin Ewing, was born on January 28, 1969, with a hole at exactly the same place as his mother (Stevenson 1992, p. 364).
In some cases, the maternal impressions occur in dreams (Stevenson 1992, p. 364). Brydon (1886) reported a case in which a woman four months pregnant dreamed that a rat had chewed off the big toe of her right foot. When her child was born, it was missing the big toe of its right foot. Hammond (1868) reported a case in which a pregnant woman dreamed about a man who had lost part of his ear. Her child was born with a defective ear, matching the one the woman saw in her dream. Hammond (1868, p. 19) stated: “I have examined this child, and the ear looks exactly as if the portion had been cut off with a sharp knife.”
Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876) was the founder of modern embryology. He told how his sister, while away from her home, saw a fire in the distance and strongly feared it was her own house burning. At the time, she was six or seven months pregnant. When her daughter was born, she had a red mark on her forehead. The red mark was pointed at the tip, like a flame (Stevenson 1997, pp. 105–106).
The Druse are an Islamic sect, living mostly in Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Tamimi Mishlib was an Israeli Druse woman. The Druse have a belief that a pregnant woman can produce a birthmark on a child within the womb under the following conditions: (1) she develops a desire to eat a certain food, (2) she does not eat that food, (3) while resisting the desire to eat the food she presses her finger on a part of her body. The result should be that the child is born with a birthmark at the same place on its body. For this psychosomatic operation to work, it should be carried out during the period when the child within the womb is particularly sensitive to this effect, i.e., the first three months of pregnancy. Tamimi Mishlib decided to test this folk belief. One day she felt a strong desire to eat some honey. She did not eat the honey, but simply looked at it. While looking at the honey, she pressed her right forearm with the thumb of her left hand. Her son, Hamad Mishlib, was born with a birthmark on his right forearm, corresponding to the place she pressed her own forearm (Stevenson 1997, pp. 150–151).