HABITUAL VISIONS
Hallucinations may become frequent, and to a certain extent systematic, especially if a belief in their supernatural origin exists; in which case a person may be for a long period of sound and discriminating understanding, except when in a trance, or beholding a vision.
The visions of St. Theresa have, for three hundred years, formed an important chapter in religious literature, and another in pathology. At twelve she was devoutly pious, becoming so after the death of her mother. About the age of fifteen she fell off into a very worldly state, and against her will was placed by her father in a convent. She was frequently ill, and finally, after a year and a half, owing to a dangerous sickness, returned home. Some time afterward she was seized with a violent fever, and upon recovery determined to devote herself to a religious life, and in opposition to her father's wishes entered a Carmelite convent and took the veil. This was in her twentieth year. Her biographer, as translated by Dr. Madden, says that she was attacked "with frequent fits of fainting and swooning, and a violent pain at her heart, which sometimes deprived her of her senses." Her first trance was in 1537, in her twenty-third year; it lasted for four days, and during it through excess of pain she bit her tongue in many places—a phenomenon common to fits of various kinds. At last she was reduced almost to a skeleton, had a paralytic affection of her limbs, and remained a cripple for three years. Her first vision was three years later, when she had allowed herself some dissipation of mind. "The apparition of our Lord was suddenly presented to the eyes of her soul, with a
