A French doctor tells us about the sufferings of Jesus in his passion

A few years ago a French doctor, Barbet, was in the Vatican together with a friend of his, Dr. Pasteau. Cardinal Pacelli was also in the list of listeners. Pasteau said that, following the research of Dr. Barbet, it was now possible to be certain that the death of Jesus on the cross had occurred by tetanic contraction of all the muscles and by asphyxiation.
Cardinal Pacelli paled. Then he murmured softly: - We knew nothing about it; no one had mentioned it.
Following that observation, Barbet wrote down a hallucinating medical reconstruction of Jesus' passion. He gave a warning:
«I am above all a surgeon; I have taught for a long time. For 13 years I lived in the company of corpses; during my career I studied anatomy in depth. I can therefore write without presumption ».

«Jesus entered agony in the garden of Gethsemane - writes the evangelist Luke - prayed more intensely. And he gave in a sweat like drops of blood that fell to the ground. " The only evangelist who reports the fact is a doctor, Luke. And it does so with the precision of a clinician. Blood sweating, or hematohydrosis, is a very rare phenomenon. It is produced in exceptional conditions: to provoke it requires physical exhaustion, accompanied by a violent moral shock, caused by a deep emotion, by a great fear. The terror, the fear, the terrible anguish of feeling charged with all the sins of men must have crushed Jesus.
This extreme tension produces the breaking of the finest capillary veins which are under the sweat glands… The blood mixes with the sweat and collects on the skin; then it drips all over the body to the ground.

We are aware of the trial farce drawn up by the Jewish Siniodrio, the sending of Jesus to Pilate and the victim's ballot between the Roman prosecutor and Herod. Pilate surrenders and orders the flagellation of Jesus. The soldiers undress Jesus and tie him by the wrists to a column in the atrium. The flagellation is carried out with strips of multiple leather on which two lead balls or small bones are fixed. The traces on the Shroud of Turin are innumerable; most of the lashes are on the shoulders, on the back, on the lumbar region and also on the chest.
The executioners must have been two, one on each side, of unequal build. They stab the skin, already altered by millions of microscopic hemorrhages from the sweat of blood. The skin tears and splits; blood spurts. At every stroke, the body of Jesus starts in a jolt of pain. The forces are less: a cold sweat pearls his forehead, his head turns in a vergine¬gine of nausea, chills run down his back. If he were not tied very high by the wrists, he would collapse into a pool of blood.

Then the mockery of the coronation. With long thorns, harder than those of acacia, the tormentors weave a kind of helmet and apply it on the head.
The thorns penetrate the scalp and cause it to heal (surgeons know how much the scalp bleeds).
From the Shroud it is noted that a strong blow of the stick given obliquely, left a horrible bruised wound on Jesus' right cheek; the nose is deformed by a fracture of the cartilaginous wing.
Pilate, after showing that rag to the angry mob, hands him over for the crucifixion.

They load the large horizontal arm of the cross on Jesus' shoulders; it weighs about fifty kilos. The vertical pole is already planted on Calvary. Jesus walks barefoot through the streets with an irregular bottom strewn with cottons. The soldiers pull him on the ropes. Fortunately, the path is not very long, about 600 meters. Jesus with difficulty puts one foot after another; often falls on his knees.
And always that beam on the shoulder. But Jesus' shoulder is covered with sores. When it falls to the ground, the beam escapes and peels its back.

On Calvary the crucifixion begins. The executioners marry the condemned; but his tunic is glued to the wounds and the removal of it is simply atrocious. Have you ever detached the dressing gauze from a large bruised wound? Have you not suffered yourself this test which sometimes requires general anesthesia? You can then realize what it is.
Each thread of cloth adheres to the fabric of live meat; to remove the tunic, the nerve endings exposed in the sores are torn. The executioners give a violent pull. Why doesn't that excruciating pain cause a syncope?
The blood starts flowing again; Jesus is stretched out on his back. Its wounds are crusted with dust and gravel. They spread it on the horizontal arm of the cross. The torturers take the measurements. A round of gimlet in the wood to facilitate the penetration of the nails and the horrible torture begins. The executioner takes a nail (a long pointed and square nail), rests it on Jesus' wrist; with a sharp blow of a hammer he plants it and hits it firmly on the wood.
Jesus must have frightfully contracted his face. At the same time his thumb, with a violent movement, was placed in opposition in the palm of the hand: the median nerve was damaged. You can imagine what Jesus must have felt: a shooting pain, very acute that has spread in his fingers, is gushing, like a tongue of fire, in the shoulder, has thundered his brain the most unbearable pain that a man can experience, that ¬ given by the wound of the big nervous trunks. Usually it causes a syncope and makes you lose consciousness. In Jesus no. At least the nerve had been cut clean! Instead (it is often observed experimentally) the nerve was only partially destroyed: the lesion of the nerve trunk remains in contact with the nail: when the body of Jesus will be suspended on the cross, the nerve will tighten tightly like a violin string tense on the bridge. With each jolt, with each movement, it will vibrate awakening the excruciating pain. A torture that will last three hours.
The same gestures are repeated for the other arm, the same pains.
The executioner and his assistant hold the ends of the beam; they lift Jesus by putting him first sitting and then standing; then making him walk backwards, addos¬sano to the vertical pole. Then quickly they fit the horizontal arm of the cross on the vertical pole.
The shoulders of Jesus crawled painfully on the rough wood. The sharp tips of the large crown of thorns have torn the skull apart. The poor head of Jesus is tilted forward, since the thickness of the helmet of thorns prevents it from resting on the wood. Every time Jesus raises his head, the sharp pangs resume.
They nail his feet.
It is noon. Jesus is thirsty. He hasn't drunk anything or eaten since the previous evening. The features are drawn, the face is a mask of blood. The mouth is half open and the lower lip already begins to hang down. His throat is dry and it burns, but Jesus cannot swallow. He is thirsty. A soldier tends a sponge soaked in an acidic drink used by the military on the tip of a barrel.
But this is only the beginning of atrocious torture. A strange phenomenon occurs in the body of Jesus. The muscles of the arms stiffen in a contraction that is intensifying: the deltoids, the biceps are tense and raised, the fingers are curved. It's about cramps. The same monstrous rigid reliefs on the thighs and legs; toes curl. It would seem a wounded hit by tetanus, in the grip of those horrible crises that cannot be forgotten. This is what doctors call tetany when the cramps generalize: the muscles of the abdomen tighten in motionless waves; then the intercostal ones, the neck ones and the respiratory ones. The breath gradually took over
short. The air comes in with a hiss but can hardly escape. Jesus breathes with the apex of the lungs. The thirst for air: like an asthmatic in full crisis, his pale face gradually turns red, then turns into purple and finally cyanotic.
Asphyxiated, Jesus suffocates. The swollen lungs can no longer empty. His forehead is beaded with sweat, his eyes come out of his orbit. What excruciating pains his skull must have hammered!

But what happens? Slowly, with a superhuman effort, Jesus took a foothold on the toe. Bringing strength, with small strokes, he pulls himself up, lightening the traction of his arms. The chest muscles are relaxed. Breathing becomes wider and deeper, the lungs empty and the face takes on its primitive pallor.
Why all this effort? Because Jesus wants to speak: "Father, forgive them: they don't know what they are doing". After a moment the body begins to sag again and the asphyxiation starts again. Seven sentences of Jesus said on the cross have been handed down: every time he wants to speak, Jesus will have to stand up on his toe nails ... Unimaginable!

A swarm of flies (large green and blue flies as seen in slaughterhouses and carters) buzzes around his body; they rage on his face, but he cannot drive them away. Fortunately, after a while, the sky darkens, the sun hides: suddenly the temperature drops. It will soon be three in the afternoon. Jesus always fights; occasionally rises to breathe. It is the periodic asphyxia of the unhappy person who is strangled and who lets himself catch his breath to suffocate him several times. A tor¬tura lasting three hours.
All his pains, thirst, cramps, asphyxiation, vibrations of the median nerves, did not cause him to complain. But the Father (and it is the last test) seems to have abandoned him: «My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?».
At the foot of the cross stood the mother of Jesus. Can you imagine the torment of that woman?
Jesus gives a cry: «It is finished».
And in a loud voice he says again: "Father, in your hands I recommend my spirit."
And he dies.