The Spiritist Review - Journal of Psychological Studies - 1863

Allan Kardec

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Studies about the possessed of Morzine
The causes of obsession and the means of fighting it

Fourth Article[1]



In a second edition of his brochure[2] about Morzine’s epidemic, Dr. Constant respond to Mr. Mirville where he criticized his skepticism about demons and for not having visited the places. “He did not go beyond Thonon, certainly not for fear of the devil but of the route and, despite that, he does not consider himself uninformed. He criticizes me, as with another doctor, for having left Paris with a preconceived idea. In good legal terms and, if he allows me, I can return the censorship: we shall then be ex aequo[3] in that point.”

We don’t know if Mr. de Mirville did go there with a preconceived idea that there would not be any physical condition in the patients of Morzine but it is clearly evident that Dr. Constant went there with the intention of not seeing there any occult cause. Prejudice in any fashion and form is the worst asset of an investigator as everything is looked at and adjusted to his given point of view, neglecting anything that can oppose this point of view. This is certainly not the best way to get to the truth.

Mr. Constant’s well entrenched idea, with respect to the denial of any occult cause, results in his rejection of any conclusion and any observation that veers off from his point of view based on the reports that were published before his own.

Thus, while Mr. Constant vehemently insists on the fragile, lymphatic and skinny corporeal constitution of the inhabitants, as the insalubrity, poor quality and insufficient food intake of the region, Mr. Arthaud, chief doctor of Lyon’s mental patients and that was sent to Morzine, he says in his report that “the constitution of the inhabitants is good and that the scrofula are rare and that despite all of his research he found only one case of epilepsy and one of mental disorder.”



However, replies Mr. Constant, “Mr. Arthaud spent only a few days in the region. He could not have seen more than a tiny portion of the population and it is very difficult to obtain information about the families.”

Another report about the same subject says:

We, the undersigned, declare that after having heard about the extraordinary cases taken by demoniac possessions in Morzine, traveled to that parish, where we arrived on September 30th last, 1857 to witness the events, and examined everything with maturity and prudence. After this examination, we clarified to ourselves, through all possible means by our physical presence in the region, that we can produce a well informed opinion about the subject matter.

  • We saw five freed youngsters and five taken ill. The youngest was a ten-year-old and the oldest was a 22 year-old.
  • According to what was reported to us and to what we could observe, the young ladies enjoyed perfect health and acted in perfect agreement with their positions. There was no difference between them and the other girls of the mountain regarding other activities.
  • We saw the non-cured ladies in times of lucidity. We can ensure that nothing different was observed be it madness or pre-disposition for the ongoing crises, by reason of character or exaltation of their minds. We applied the same observation to the cured ones. All persons consulted about the antecedents and first years of those ladies assured us that, regarding their intelligence, they were absolutely normal.
  • The large majority of the ladies belonged to well-to-do families.
  • We attest that they belong to families that enjoyed good reputations among which some show exemplary virtues and altruism.”

In due course, we will continue with this report. We only wanted to make it clear that not everyone saw things with the same dark colors as Mr. Constant, which presented the inhabitants as if in extreme misery, stubborn, and liars when, in fact, they are good, charitable and devout.

Well, who is right? Mr. Constant alone or several others no less honorable who certified having observed as well? From our perspective, there is no hesitation in taking sides with the latter ones considering what we observed ourselves and what we were told by several medical and administrative authorities from the region. This perspective also supports our opinion from preceding articles.

To us, the primary cause is not in the physical constitution or in the hygiene of the inhabitants as there are many neighboring regions, as we mentioned and starting from the Valais, in which the natural, moral and other conditions are infinitely less favorable and where that disease was not found.

We find it limited, not to the valley, but to the commune of Morzine. If, as indicated by Mr. Constant, the cause is inherent to the place, to the life style and moral inferiority of the inhabitants, we then ask why the effect is epidemic and not endemic, like the mumps and cretinism in the Valais. Why the epidemics of the same kind illustrated by history were produced in religious temples in the healthiest of conditions?

As a matter of fact, here is the picture painted by Mr. Constant about the character of the people of Morzine:

A prolonged stay, successive and daily visits to all houses allowed me to get to other conclusions:

Morzine inhabitants are kind, honest and very altruist; it would perhaps be fair to say that they show great devotion. They are strong headed and hardly reject their own ideas and that, besides other inconveniences, it is only in very rare cases that the criminal justice finds any guilty person among them. They appear serious and judicious, apparently, a reflex of a rough nature around them. This situation gives them a certain privacy, as if member of a large religious community. In fact, their way of life does not differ much from a monastery.

They would be smart if their reasoning were not obscured by a number of absurd or exaggerated beliefs, by an irresistible attraction to the supernatural, inherited from the past centuries and from the current century which has not cured them. All of them like the stories about the impossible. Most are fundamentally honest but some lie with a seamless expression to sustain their reports, although I am certain they do lie in good faith for believing in their own stories and in the stories of others. To be fair, it must be said that the majority do not lie rather they just report what they saw inaccurately.”

For us, the causes are independent from the physical conditions of people and things. If we say so, it is not with the objective of seeing Spirits everywhere that nobody admits their presence with more restrictions than we do rather for the analogy that we observe among certain effects and those that are positively demonstrated as coming from a hidden source.

Nevertheless, how can one admit such a cause when the very existence of the Spirits is in doubt? How can one admit with Raspail the diseases caused by microscopic creatures when the existence of those animals is denied because they cannot be seen? Before the invention of the microscope, Raspail would be taken as a madman for seeing those little beings everywhere. Nowadays, when we are a bit more enlightened, the Spirits are not seen! For that, however, all we need is to wear glasses.

After Mr. Constant mentioned Mr. Mirville who, according to him, stopped in the middle, he adds:

Mr. Allan Kardec covered the whole thing. In the December 1862 and January 1863 issues of his Spiritist Review he has already published two preliminary articles. The analysis of the facts will come in the February issue. While we wait, he warns us that the Morzine epidemic is like the one that took place in Judea at the time of Jesus Christ. It is very possible.

Although I take the risk of being criticized by some readers, who think that I would be better off by not mentioning the Spiritists, I advise those who may read this brochure to also read about the same subject in the aforementioned authors.

However, make no mistake about my invitation. The sooner that more serious readers get to know the books about Spiritism the sooner complete justice will be made about a belief, a science as they say, about which I could perhaps risk an opinion after having verified one its results so many times: the remarkable contingent of people that such believe provides annually to the population of mad people.”

From the above, one can imagine the preconceived ideas that took Mr. Constant to Morzine. We will certainly not try to convince him about our opinion. We will only tell him that, as a result of the reading of the Spiritist books, demonstrated by experience, it was totally the opposite to his expectations. Rather than doing was he said, it actually multiplies the number of followers by the thousands. Today there are five or six millions of them in the whole world of which ten percent are in France alone. If his rebuttal indicated that these are silly and ignorant people only, we then ask him why this doctrine counts on such a large number of medical doctors in every country. These doctors, in fact, are among its most eager followers, demonstrated by our correspondence, the number of doctors subscribing to the Spiritist Review, and among those presiding over or taking part in Spiritist groups and societies. There is also a large number of followers who enjoy social positions only achieved for their intelligence and education. That is a material fact that nobody can deny. Well, since every effect has a cause, the cause of this effect is that Spiritism does not seem as absurd as some people would like it to be!

  • It is unfortunately true, say the adversaries of the doctrine. Thus, we no longer have to be ashamed of the future of humanity that marches towards decadence.

There still remains the subject of madness, the bugaboo with which they try to terrify people who, in turn, are not scared as mentioned above. When this argument is over they will certainly invent another one. While we wait, we refer the reader to article published last February under the title: Spiritist insanity. The first symptoms of Morzine’s epidemic came out in March 1857 with two eleven-year-old girls. In the following November, the number of people taken by the disease counted twenty-seven then achieving a maximum of one hundred and twenty people in 1861.

The observations below were taken from the same report mentioned above:

These young ladies speak French with a remarkable skill during the episodes, even those who only know a few words in their normal state. During the episodes, they lose any reservation of any kind and also completely lose their family affections. The answer is always so prompt and easy that seems to come before the question arises. The answer is always ad rem[4] except when the person who speaks say silly things, insults or formally refuses to speak. During the episodes, the pulse remains calm and in moments of rage the person shows an air of domination as if commanding wrath, with no exaltation or physical changes. An incredible insolence is observed during the events in girls that out of that phenomenon are timid and kind. All girls show an incredible irreverence beyond any limit with anything that relates to God, the mysteries of religion, Mary, the saints, the sacraments, etc. The dominant characteristic at that moment is hatred towards God and towards anything related to God. We were able to verify well that those girls say things that go back a long way, facts from the past that they had no knowledge about. They also revealed the thoughts in the minds of several persons. Sometimes they announced the beginning, duration and end of the episodes, what they are going to do and what they are not going to do later. We know that they provided accurate answers to questions framed in unknown languages to them such as German, Latin, etc. During the episodes, the girls have a strength that is disproportionate to their age for during the exorcism three or four men are needed to restrain the ten-year-old girls. It is remarkable that the girls do not hurt themselves either by the contractions that seem to dislocate their limbs or by the falls or by the violent punches that they swing against themselves. In their answers, there is always, invariably, a distinction between several entities: the daughter and the devil. Away from the episodes the girls keep no memory of what they had done or said irrespective if the episodes took a whole day or realized assignments that were given in the episodic state.

As a conclusion:

We believe all that to be supernatural, in its cause and effects, according to the rules of a sound logic and according to the teachings of the whole theology, the ecclesiastic history and the Gospels. We declare that, in our opinion, there is a true possession by the devil.

Faithfully signed by…

Morzine, October 5th, 1857



Here is how Mr. Constant describes the patients’ episodes, according to his observations:

Amidst the most complete quietness, rarely at night, suddenly, there is yawning, stretching of arms, trembling and little shakes of the arms; soon and gradually, as if from electrical discharges, such movements become faster, then simpler and after a short interval they seem like no more than exaggerations of some physiological movements; their pupils dilate and contract successively and the eyes take part in the general change. The patients whose initial aspect expressed terror enter now a state of ascending uproar as if their dominating thought produced two almost simultaneous effects: depression followed immediately by excitation. They then hit the furniture with strength and vivacity, start to speak, or even better, to vociferate; when they are not answering any question they simply repeat these words indefinitely: S… name! F… F… red! (They use the word red to refer to those whose goodness they don’t believe). Some add blasphemies. If there is no stranger near them or if no question had been asked they just repeat the same thing without adding anything else. On the contrary, if there is someone asking them questions they respond even to their thoughts but never leaving aside their dominating idea, relating everything to that! It is always like that: - Do you believe, you…. Unbeliever, that we are mad, that it is all madness! We are diabolic, f… We are devils from hell!

And since it is always a demon that speaks out of their mouth, the supposed devil sometimes says what he did when on Earth and what he does now in hell, etc.

When I was present they invariably said: It is not your f… doctors what will cure us! We know well your f… remedies! You can make the girls take them, they will take it and it will make them suffer but they will not reach us because we are devils! We need saint priests, bishops, etc.

That does not preclude them from insulting the bishops when they are not around under the pretext that they are not saint enough to have any effect upon the demons. It was always the same thing in the presence of the mayor or the magistrate.

While they speak, always with the same passion, they always show the same look: uproar. Their necks and faces sometimes swell; other times they go pale like normal people when they blush or become pale in moments of rage and according to their constitution. Their lips are always moist with saliva and that is what led people to say that they foamed.

Their movements are initially limited to the superior limbs, then gaining the trunk and inferior ones; they pant, become aggressive, move the furniture around, throw the chairs and stools away, everything that they can reach is thrown at the audience; they through themselves at people trying to hit them, relatives and strangers; thrown themselves on the ground, always with the same screams; roll over, hit the ground with their bare hands, or hit their own chests, their venter, their throats, always trying to remove something that seems to bother them. They jump and turn in the air. I saw two of them jumping backwards in the air, head and feet touching the ground at the same time. Such phenomenon lasts approximately ten, twenty minutes, half an hour, depending on what had provoked it. If that is the presence of a stranger, notably a priest, it is rare the case that it ends before that person leaves. In such a case, however, the movements are not so much continuous. After a violent beginning their intensity yields and go to a standstill before restarting immediately, as if the nervous power rested a little bit in order to recover.

During the episodes, the heart beat does not accelerate and more commonly it is the opposite: it weakens, become slower and the body extremities colder; despite the violence of the agitation and the fierce blows and swings in all directions, the hands become cold. Contrary to what is generally seen in similar cases there is no mixture of erotic with demoniac ideas. I was impressed myself by witnessing that not a single girl uses obscene gestures. They never uncover themselves in their most disorderly acts and when the dresses raise a bit rolling on the ground the recompose immediately. It does not seem to produce any lesion in their genital sensitivity; it has never been about incubus, succubus or any scene of the Sabbath. All patients belong to the second one of the four groups indicated by Mr. Macario. Some hear the voice of the demons; much more frequently, though, they speak through their mouths.

Their movements gradually become slower after the great mess; certain gases escape from their mouths and the episode is over. The patient looks around in awe, fixes the hair, grabs the hat and put it on, drinks some water and go back to normal work if doing something before the episode. Almost all of them report no tiredness or remember anything that they did or said.

This last statement is not always true. I surprised some of them remembering very well. They only added: - I know well that he (the devil) said or did this or that, but it was not me. If my mouth spoke, if my hands hit, it was him that made them speak and hit. I wanted to be left alone but he is stronger.

This is the description of the most common state but there are several degrees between the extremes, from the patient that only complains of intestinal pain to the one that gets to the highest degree of rage. Having said that among all patients that I visited I found no significant differences worth noting except in a few cases.

One of them called Jeanne Br… forty years old, single, hysterical for a long time, feels animals that are no more than demons running over hear face and biting her.

Mrs. Nicolas B…, thirty years old, ill for three years, barks during the episodes. She attributes her illness to a glass of wine that she one day had with one of those evil ones.

Jeanne G… thirty-seven years old, single, is the one that shows the most different features. She shows no clonic spasms of the others and almost never speaks. In her episodes, she sits down and rocks hear head forward and backward. The motion initially slow and not much pronounced accelerates to the point that the head forms circles wider and wider, with an incredible speed, until it reaches and alternates between her back and chest. The movement stops momentarily and the head is kept in the position that it had before the movement stopped in such a way that one cannot lift hear head or fold it even external force.

Victoire V… twenty years old, was of the first ones to fall ill at the age of sixteen. Here is how her father describes the events – She had never felt anything when one day she was taken by the illness at the church. During the first two or three days, she only jumped a little. One day she brought me dinner at the Curia where I worked and the Angelus was playing when she arrived. She immediately started jumping, threw herself on the ground screaming and gesticulating, saying blasphemies to the bell-ringer. The curia of Montriond was there by chance. She cursed him, calling him the f… of Montriond. The curia of Morzine came close to her as well, the episode stopped to restart immediately because he did the sign of the cross on hear forehead. They exorcized her several times and when we saw that nothing would help her I took her to Geneva to Mr. Lafontaine, the magnetizer. She stayed there for a month and was cured. She was okay for about three years.

She relapsed six weeks ago but the episodes were over. She did not want to see anyone and locked herself in the house. She only ate when I offered her something good. On other occasions, she could not swallow. She could not stand or move her arms. I tried to help her stand several times but she could not do it so that I had to hold her to avoid her fall. I decided to take her to Mr. Lafontaine again. I did not know how to take her. She said to me: - when I am at the commune of Montriond I will walk alright. A neighbor helped me to carry her over to Montriond. As soon as we crossed the bridge she walked on her own, just complaining of a horrible taste in her mouth. She improved with only two sessions with Mr. Lafontaine and she now works as a maid.

It has been generally observed, says Mr. Constant, that outside the commune the patients only rarely have episodes.

One day I was accompanied by the mayor who was violently attacked and hit with a stone on his face. About the same time another patient charged at him with a stick in hand trying to hit him. He saw that and showed her the armored tip of his waking stick, threatening her if she continued. She stopped, dropped the weapon and continue to curse him.

Despite the runs, jumps, violent and disorderly movements of the patients, their attacks, terrors and divagations, there has been no report of attempt suicide or serious incidents with any one of them. Hence they do not completely lose conscience and the instinct of conservation remains.

If, at the start of the episode, the woman has a child in her arms it happens that sometimes a not as bad devil as the one that is going to work her says: leave the child; he (the other devil) would harm her. The same happens when the woman has a knife or another potentially harmful instrument.

As with the women, men also suffered the influence that depresses everyone but in them the effects were smaller and very different. Some really feel the same pains as the women; they feel suffocation, a feeling of strangulation but none had convulsions and if some convulsive incident was reported they were almost always attributed to a different and prior morbid state. The only male representative that seemed to have had the same sensations as the women was the young T… The girls involved in the episodes are typically between fifteen and twenty-five years old. The males, on the contrary and with the exception of T… are only mature men that perhaps life’s hardships had brought back preexistent concerns or added to those caused by the disease.”

After having discussed the majority of the extraordinary events about the patients of Morzine and trying to demonstrate the state of physical and moral degradation of the inhabitants out of inheritance, Mr. Constant adds:

“Hence it is necessary to take into account that everything that has been said about Morzine must be considerably reduced when faced by the truth. Each one told their story and wanted it to be bigger than the other one. Such exaggerations are found in all reports of epidemics of that kind. Even if some events were authentic in every aspect and escaped any possible interpretation, would that be enough to give them any interpretation beyond the natural ones? It would be the same as saying that the agents whose modus operandi have not yet been discovered and escape our analysis are necessarily supernatural.

Everything that was witnessed in Morzine, particularly what is said, may well be positive signs of possession to certain people but it is also, with certainty, signs of that complex disease that was named hysterical-demon mania.

To summarize, we have just seen a region whose climate is tough and temperature shows large fluctuations, where hysteria has been considered epidemic at all times; a population whose food provisions are always the same to everybody, richer or poorer, always bad, composed of eventually altered produce that may provoke and do provoke alterations of functions of organs of the gastric system, and from there nervous diseases; a population of a weak and special constitution, frequently marked by genetic predispositions, ignorant and living in an almost complete isolation; a devoted population but a devotion that is more founded on fear than hope; very superstitious and whose superstition, that ulcer that St. Thomas called a vice opposed to excessive religion, has been more welcomed than fought against. Driven by stories of witchcraft that are the only entertainment outside the ceremonies of the Church, the only one that is not impeded by an exaggerated religious severity; a lively imagination, easily impressed, with the need of anything and that has nothing else but those very ceremonies.”

-o-

We need now to examine the relationships that may exist between the phenomena described above and those that take place in well verified cases of obsession and subjugation that everyone has undoubtedly noted; the effect of the curative means that were employed; the causes of the inefficacy of exorcism and the conditions in which they take place. That is what we are going to discuss in a next and final article.

Meanwhile we say with Mr. Constant that there is no need to seek an explanation to the unknown phenomena in the supernatural. We are in perfect agreement with him in that regard. To us, the Spiritist phenomena have nothing related to the supernatural. The reveal to us one of the forces of nature that we did not know and that produces unexplained effects up until now. Such law that blossoms out of facts and observations is it more unreasonable because its drivers are intelligent beings instead of animals or brute matter?

Will it be senseless to believe in active intelligences beyond the grave particularly when they manifest in such a tangible way? The knowledge of that law, by taking certain effects to their true cause, simple and natural, is the best antidote to superstition.





[1] See December 1862, January and February 1863 issues of the Spiritist Review


[2] Brochure Adrien Delahaye, School of Medicine Square, price 2 francs


[3] Latin expression meaning according to the right (TN)


[4] Latin expressions that means: directly referred to the thing… (Revising team)


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