Medical history: May 2008 Archives
In the latest issue of Neurology, neuropsychologist Sallie Baxendale describes the curious, destitute life of Christina the Astonishing (1150-1224), whose recurrent seizures were contemporaneously viewed as soul-saving trips to Purgatory. Baxendale draws on the 1232 account of Thomas de Cantimpre and the probably more reliable record of Cardinal Jacque de Vitry to examine the nature of Christina's epileptic fits, which began at the age of 22.
Baxendale describes Christina's first seizure as profound, and it was believed that the young woman had died as a result. However, during the Agnus Dei of the requiem mass for Christina's funeral the following day, she rose from her coffin and ascended to the rafters of the church (evidently scaring the bejesus out of everybody in attendance).
Later Christina described her "death" as a trip to Purgatory and then Heaven, where she was given the option of either staying in Heaven or enduring "the sufferings of an immortal soul in a mortal body...and by these sufferings to deliver all those souls on whom you had compassion" in Purgatory. Presumably the latter option meant experiencing recurrent seizures during life, which she chose.
Baxendale relates other behaviors during Christina's life, which strongly suggest that she experienced complex partial seizures with frequent secondary generalization. In particular, Christina often sensed very strong, unpleasant smells, which she attributed to the "stench of human sin" (and not medieval Belgium); however, these experiences are highly reminiscent of characteristic olfactory auras. One description of Christina's seizures indicates postictal stupor, followed by extreme embarrassment, which Baxendale finds to be a "startling account of the postictal confusion and the impact of epilepsy on self esteem that continue to [be] feature[d] in many contemporary accounts in epilepsy journals today."
Christina apparently experienced one more false death toward the end of her life, which may have been the manifestation of recurrent status epilepticus, perhaps even nonconvulsive status epilepticus.
In 1992, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds paid haunting tribute to Christina (link to mp3 sample), with lyrics that faithfully describe her bizarre, recorded behaviors.
Christina the Astonishing
Lived a long time ago
She was stricken with a seizure
At the age of twenty-two
They took her body in a coffin
To a tiny church in Liege
Where she sprang up from the coffin
Just after the Agnus Dei
She soared up to the rafters
Perched on a beam up there
Cried The stink of human sin
Is more that I can bear
Christina the Astonishing
Was the most astonishing of all
She prayed balanced on a hurdle
Or curled up into a ball
She fled to remote places
Climbed towers and trees and walls
To escape the stench of human corruption
Into an oven she did crawl
O Christina the Astonishing
Behaved in a terrifying way
She would run wildly through the streets
Jump in the Meuse and swim away
O Christina the Astonishing
Behaved in terrifying manner
Died at the age of seventy-four
In the convent of St Anna
