Joan of Arc: a Medical View
Medical explanations of human character and conduct are by themselves (as William James pointed out) usually “destructive and insufficient.” It seems highly possible that Joan of Arc suffered from tuberculosis. But this analysis of her medical background, write John and Isobel-Ann Butterfield, does nothing to lessen our admiration for her heroic and inspired life.
Although many explanations for Joan of Arc’s voices and visions have been advanced, none is generally accepted. People with strong religious convictions take them for a series of miracles. By contrast, the attempts by disbelievers to find a rational explanation for her hallucinations seem weak.
For example, who today is convinced that she was a practising witch all the time, or that she was a tool in the hands of the French Church, or that she witnessed some scenes played out in the woods by wandering Franciscans, or that she was a Galtonic visualiser? And are the relatively few suggestions in the scientific literature, almost all confined to psychiatric disorders—auto-suggestion or schizophrenia—any better?
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