The Trouble with Joan

Among the many mysteries of Joan of Arc's meteoric career, one of the most baffling is the origin of her inspiration--her "voices," as she called them. Was she hysterical? Was she insane? No, say two British students of the Maid and her works: all the available medical evidence fits together into a neat and simple explanation that detracts nothing from Joan's greatness.

Isobel-Ann Butterfield, 34, U.S.-born, Radcliffe-educated wife of a London physician, was angry when she read modern interpretations of Joan's career that branded her insane. She began digging the evidence out of the archives, soon called in her husband John, 38, professor of experimental medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School, to help her with the technical aspects. He eventually became as interested as she was, wound up doing a detective-style postmortem. In History Today, the Butterfields spin their evidence into a tight web.

Sounds on the Right. First sign of Joan's unusual qualities, they note, came at 12 1/2, when she began to have "mixed sensations of sight and sound, coming from her right, together with touch and smell . . . The sensations were generally accompanied by a bright light." Modern neurology attributes such symptoms to disease in the brain's temporal lobe, close to the sphenoid bone, where it may affect the nerves for several senses.

The disease process may begin with a small stroke, or it may be caused by a tumor. Though it is seldom seen today, a particularly common tumor among peasants of the Middle Ages, who lived close to their herds, was tuberculoma. This was often caused by the bacilli of bovine tuberculosis--the same bacteria that made the ruff fashionable to hide the swellings of scrofula ("the king's evil"). Since Joan's right-side perception was affected, the tumor would be in the left hemisphere of her brain.

What other evidence is there that Joan had bovine TB? One obvious item, Dr. Butterfield noted, was that she did not menstruate. Another was that when she was ill in prison at Rouen she appeared to have a kidney infection. And if she had something wrong with her temporal lobe, it was most likely a tuberculoma (a "firm, cheeselike abscess"), because when she jumped from the tower of Beaurevoir (variously estimated as 40 to 70 ft. high) she suffered no hemorrhage. Finally, Joan's conscientious executioner complained that even in his hottest fire her entrails would not burn. Dr. Butterfield suggests that this "would not be surprising if there were many calcified lymph glands in the abdomen, the usual result of bovine tuberculosis."

Not by Disease Alone. Despite the ingenuity of their retrospective diagnosis, the Butterfields are far from wanting to debunk Saint Joan. "Though we may understand the reason for her visions," they conclude, "we should be making a great mistake if we attributed Joan's greatness to organic disease alone . . . It is not her visions and voices, but her courage, her intelligence, her ability to get big things done, and her struggle for the independence of her mind which distinguish Joan and place her among the great women."

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