[Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine by George M. Gould]@TWC D-Link book
Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine

CHAPTER IX
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Hyperidrosis confined to the hands and feet is quite common.
Instances of bloody sweat and "stigmata" have been known through the ages and are most interesting anomalies.

In the olden times there were people who represented that in their own persons they realized at certain periods the agonies of Gethsemane, as portrayed in medieval art, e.g., by pictures of Christ wearing the crown of thorns in Pilate's judgment hall.

Some of these instances were, perhaps, of the nature of compensatory hemorrhage, substituting the menses or periodic hemorrhoids, hemoptysis, epistaxis, etc., or possibly purpura.

Extreme religious frenzy or deep emotions might have been the indirect cause of a number of these bleeding zealots.

There are instances on record in which fear and other similar emotions have caused a sweating of blood, the expression "sweating blood" being not uncommon.
Among the older writers, Ballonius, Marcolini, and Riedlin mention bloody sweat.


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