Religious stigmata, magnetic fluids and conversion hysteria: one survival of 'vital force' theories in scientific medicine?
A study of Natuzza Evolo, a contemporary Roman Catholic stigmatic in southern Italy, raises certain questions of mechanism and evidence. Was this a miracle, hysterical conversion or contrived? The medical interpretation of the phenomenon as conversion disorder raises questions about the popularity of hysteria as a medical diagnosis and the ways in which it functions like 'vital force', as a metaphoric mediator between the natural world, human agency, and the ultrahuman.
University College Centre for Medical Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University College London, UK. r.littlewood@ucl.ac.uk
Roland
R
Littlewood
Goffredo
G
Bartocci
D002835:Christianity; D003291:Conversion Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008280:Magnetics; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012068:Religion and Medicine; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012586:Science; D013534:Survival