Note 45 — THE CONVULSIONISTS OF ST. MÉDARD.

Montgéron supplies evidence that the expression clubs, here used, is not misapplied. He furnishes quotations from a petition addressed to the Parliament of Paris by the mother of the girl Turpin, praying for a legal investigation of her daughter's case by the attorney-general, and offering to furnish him with the names, station in life, and addresses of the witnesses to the wonderful cure, in this case, of a monstrous deformity that was almost congenital; in which petition it is stated,—"Little by little the force with which she was struck was augmented, and at last the blows were given with billets of oak-wood, one end of which was reduced in diameter so as to form a handle, while the other end, with which the strokes were dealt, was from seven to eight inches in circumference, so that these billets were in fact small clubs." (Montgéron, Tom. III. p. 552.) This would give from eight to nine inches, English measure, or nearly three inches in diameter, and of oak!