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Nor has the recent history of the United States been less
fruitful in lessons. Yellow fever, which formerly swept not only
Southern cities but even New York and Philadelphia, has now been
almost entirely warded off. Such epidemics as that in Memphis a
few years since, and the immunity of the city from such
visitations since its sanitary condition was changed by Mr.
Waring, are a most striking object lesson to the whole country.
Cholera, which again and again swept the country, has ceased to
be feared by the public at large. Typhus fever, once so deadly,
is now rarely heard of. Curious is it to find that some of the
diseases which in the olden time swept off myriads on myriads in
every country, now cause fewer deaths than some diseases thought
of little account, and for the cure of which people therefore
rely, to their cost, on quackery instead of medical science.

This development of sanitary science and hygiene in the
United States has also been coincident with a marked change in
the attitude of the American pulpit as regards the theory of
disease. In this country, as in others, down to a period within
living memory, deaths due to want of sanitary precautions were
constantly dwelt upon in funeral sermons as "results of national
sin," or as "inscrutable Providences." That view has mainly
passed away among the clergy of the more enlightened parts of the
country, and we now find them, as a rule, active in spreading
useful ideas as to the prevention of disease. The religious press
has been especially faithful in this respect, carrying to every
household more just ideas of sanitary precautions and hygienic living.

The attitude even of many among the most orthodox rulers in
church and state has been changed by facts like these. Lord
Palmerston refusing the request of the Scotch clergy that a fast
day be appointed to ward off cholera, and advising them to go
home and clean their streets,--the devout Emperor William II
forbidding prayer-meetings in a similar emergency, on the ground
that they led to neglect of practical human means of help,--all
this is in striking contrast to the older methods.

Well worthy of note is the ground taken in 1893, at
Philadelphia, by an eminent divine of the Protestant Episcopal
Church. The Bishop of Pennsylvania having issued a special call
to prayer in order to ward off the cholera, this clergyman
refused to respond to the call, declaring that to do so, in the
filthy condition of the streets then prevailing in Philadelphia,
would be blasphemous.

In summing up the whole subject, we see that in this field,
as in so many others, the triumph of scientific thought has
gradually done much to evolve in the world not only a theology
but also a religious spirit more and more worthy of the goodness
of God and of the destiny of man.[[95]]


                               CHAPTER XV.
              FROM "DEMONIACAL POSSESSION" TO INSANITY.

         I. THEOLOGICAL IDEAS OF LUNACY AND ITS TREATMENT.

OF all the triumphs won by science for humanity, few have
been farther-reaching in good effects than the modern treatment
of the insane. But this is the result of a struggle long and
severe between two great forces. On one side have stood the
survivals of various superstitions, the metaphysics of various
philosophies, the dogmatism of various theologies, the literal
interpretation of various sacred books, and especially of our
own--all compacted into a creed that insanity is mainly or
largely demoniacal possession; on the other side has stood
science, gradually accumulating proofs that insanity is always
the result of physical disease.

I purpose in this chapter to sketch, as briefly as I may, the history
of this warfare, or rather of this evolution of truth out of error.

Nothing is more simple and natural, in the early stages of
civilization, than belief in occult, self-conscious powers of
evil. Troubles and calamities come upon man; his ignorance of
physical laws forbids him to attribute them to physical causes;
he therefore attributes them sometimes to the wrath of a good
being, but more frequently to the malice of an evil being.

Especially is this the case with diseases. The real causes
of disease are so intricate that they are reached only after ages
of scientific labour; hence they, above all, have been attributed
to the influence of evil spirits.[[97]]

But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to
diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and
especially the more obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed to
the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory of
Satanic intervention: any approach to a true theory of the
connection between physical causes and mental results is one of
the highest acquisitions of science.

Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men
had obtained an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude,
down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more
clear than that insanity is, in many if not in most cases,
demoniacal possession.

Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had
asserted itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed
destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.[[98]] In the fifth
century before the Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos asserted the
great truth that all madness is simply disease of the brain,
thereby beginning a development of truth and mercy which lasted
nearly a thousand years. In the first century after Christ,
Aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed the phenomena
of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more valuable
results. Near the beginning of the following century, Soranus
went still further in the same path, giving new results of
research, and strengthening scientific truth. Toward the end of
the same century a new epoch was ushered in by Galen, under whom
the same truth was developed yet further, and the path toward
merciful treatment of the insane made yet more clear. In the
third century Celius Aurelianus received this deposit of precious
truth, elaborated it, and brought forth the great idea which, had
theology, citing biblical texts, not banished it, would have
saved fifteen centuries of cruelty--an idea not fully recognised
again till near the beginning of the present century--the idea
that insanity is brain disease, and that the treatment of it must
be gentle and kind. In the sixth century Alexander of Tralles
presented still more fruitful researches, and taught the world
how to deal with _melancholia_; and, finally, in the seventh
century, this great line of scientific men, working mainly under
pagan auspices, was closed by Paul of AEgina, who under the
protection of Caliph Omar made still further observations, but,
above all, laid stress on the cure of madness as a disease, and
on the absolute necessity of mild treatment.

Such was this great succession in the apostolate of science:
evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under
Divine grace, illumination, and guidance. It had given to the
world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.[[99]]

This evolution of divine truth was interrupted by theology.
There set into the early Church a current of belief which was
destined to bring all these noble acquisitions of science and
religion to naught, and, during centuries, to inflict tortures,
physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent men
and women--a belief which held its cruel sway for nearly eighteen
centuries; and this belief was that madness was mainly or largely
possession by the devil.

This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease had grown
luxuriantly in all the Oriental sacred literatures. In the series
of Assyrian mythological tablets in which we find those legends
of the Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and other early conceptions
from which the Hebrews so largely drew the accounts wrought into
the book of Genesis, have been discovered the formulas for
driving out the evil spirits which cause disease. In the Persian
theology regarding the struggle of the great powers of good and
evil this idea was developed to its highest point. From these and
other ancient sources the Jews naturally received this addition
to their earlier view: the Mocker of the Garden of Eden became
Satan, with legions of evil angels at his command; and the theory
of diabolic causes of mental disease took a firm place in our
sacred books. Such cases in the Old Testament as the evil spirit
in Saul, which we now see to have been simply melancholy--and,
in the New Testament, the various accounts of the casting out of
devils, through which is refracted the beautiful and simple story
of that power by which Jesus of Nazareth soothed perturbed minds
by his presence or quelled outbursts of madness by his words,
give examples of this. In Greece, too, an idea akin to this found
lodgment both in the popular belief and in the philosophy of
Plato and Socrates; and though, as we have seen, the great
leaders in medical science had taught with more or less
distinctness that insanity is the result of physical disease,
there was a strong popular tendency to attribute the more
troublesome cases of it to hostile spiritual influence.[[100]]

From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books
and the writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is
caused largely or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the
early Church. In the apostolic times no belief seems to have been
more firmly settled. The early fathers and doctors in the
following age universally accepted it, and the apologists
generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as a leading
proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion.

This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The case
of St. Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly
broad mind for his time, and no one will think him unjustly
reckoned one of the four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he
solemnly relates that a nun, having eaten some lettuce without
making the sign of the cross, swallowed a devil, and that, when
commanded by a holy man to come forth, the devil replied: "How am
I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not
having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it."[[101]]

As a result of this idea, the Christian Church at an early
period in its existence virtually gave up the noble conquests of
Greek and Roman science in this field, and originated, for
persons supposed to be possessed, a regular discipline, developed
out of dogmatic theology. But during the centuries before
theology and ecclesiasticism had become fully dominant this
discipline was, as a rule, gentle and useful. The afflicted, when
not too violent, were generally admitted to the exercises of
public worship, and a kindly system of cure was attempted, in
which prominence was given to holy water, sanctified ointments,
the breath or spittle of the priest, the touching of relics,
visits to holy places, and submission to mild forms of exorcism.
There can be no doubt that many of these things, when judiciously
used in that spirit of love and gentleness and devotion inherited
by the earlier disciples from "the Master," produced good effects
in soothing disturbed minds and in aiding their cure.

Among the thousands of fetiches of various sorts then
resorted to may be named, as typical, the Holy Handkerchief of
Besancon. During many centuries multitudes came from far and near
to touch it; for, it was argued, if touching the garments of St.
Paul at Ephesus had cured the diseased, how much more might be
expected of a handkerchief of the Lord himself!

With ideas of this sort was mingled a vague belief in
medical treatment, and out of this mixture were evolved such
prescriptions as the following:

"If an elf or a goblin come, smear his forehead with this
salve, put it on his eyes, cense him with incense, and sign him
frequently with the sign of the cross."

"For a fiend-sick man: When a devil possesses a man, or controls
him from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin, bishopswort,
henbane, garlic. Pound these together, add ale and holy water."

And again: "A drink for a fiend-sick man, to be drunk out of
a church bell: Githrife, cynoglossum, yarrow, lupin,
flower-de-luce, fennel, lichen, lovage. Work up to a drink with
clear ale, sing seven masses over it, add garlic and holy water,
and let the possessed sing the _Beati Immaculati_; then let him
drink the dose out of a church bell, and let the priest sing over
him the _Domine Sancte Pater Omnipotens_."[[102]]

Had this been the worst treatment of lunatics developed in
the theological atmosphere of the Middle Ages, the world would
have been spared some of the most terrible chapters in its
history; but, unfortunately, the idea of the Satanic possession
of lunatics led to attempts to punish the indwelling demon. As
this theological theory and practice became more fully developed,
and ecclesiasticism more powerful to enforce it, all mildness
began to disappear; the admonitions to gentle treatment by the
great pagan and Moslem physicians were forgotten, and the
treatment of lunatics tended more and more toward severity: more
and more generally it was felt that cruelty to madmen was
punishment of the devil residing within or acting upon them.

A few strong churchmen and laymen made efforts to resist
this tendency. As far back as the fourth century, Nemesius,
Bishop of Emesa, accepted the truth as developed by pagan
physicians, and aided them in strengthening it. In the seventh
century, a Lombard code embodied a similar effort. In the eighth
century, one of Charlemagne's capitularies seems to have had a
like purpose. In the ninth century, that great churchman and
statesman, Agobard, Archbishop of Lyons, superior to his time in
this as in so many other things, tried to make right reason
prevail in this field; and, near the beginning of the tenth
century, Regino, Abbot of Prum, in the diocese of Treves,
insisted on treating possession as disease. But all in vain;
the current streaming most directly from sundry texts in the
Christian sacred books, and swollen by theology, had become
overwhelming.[[103]]

The first great tributary poured into this stream, as we
approach the bloom of the Middle Ages, appears to have come from
the brain of Michael Psellus. Mingling scriptural texts, Platonic
philosophy, and theological statements by great doctors of the
Church, with wild utterances obtained from lunatics, he gave
forth, about the beginning of the twelfth century, a treatise on
_The Work of Demons_. Sacred science was vastly enriched thereby
in various ways; but two of his conclusions, the results of his
most profound thought, enforced by theologians and popularized by
preachers, Soon took special hold upon the thinking portion of
the people at large. The first of these, which he easily based
upon Scripture and St. Basil, was that, since all demons suffer
by material fire and brimstone, they must have material bodies;
the second was that, since all demons are by nature cold, they
gladly seek a genial warmth by entering the bodies of men and
beasts.[[104]]

Fed by this stream of thought, and developed in the warm
atmosphere of medieval devotion, the idea of demoniacal
possession as the main source of lunacy grew and blossomed and
bore fruit in noxious luxuriance.

There had, indeed, come into the Middle Ages an inheritance
of scientific thought. The ideas of Hippocrates, Celius
Aurelianus, Galen, and their followers, were from time to time
revived; the Arabian physicians, the School of Salerno, such
writers as Salicetus and Guy de Chauliac, and even some of the
religious orders, did something to keep scientific doctrines
alive; but the tide of theological thought was too strong; it
became dangerous even to seem to name possible limits to
diabolical power. To deny Satan was atheism; and perhaps nothing
did so much to fasten the epithet "atheist" upon the medical
profession as the suspicion that it did not fully acknowledge
diabolical interference in mental disease. Following in the lines
of the earlier fathers, St. Anselm, Abelard, St. Thomas Aquinas,
Vincent of Beauvais, all the great doctors in the medieval
Church, some of them in spite of occasional misgivings, upheld
the idea that insanity is largely or mainly demoniacal
possession, basing their belief steadily on the sacred
Scriptures; and this belief was followed up in every quarter by
more and more constant citation of the text "Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live." No other text of Scripture--save perhaps
one--has caused the shedding of so much innocent blood.

As we look over the history of the Middle Ages, we do,
indeed, see another growth from which one might hope much; for
there were two great streams of influence in the Church, and
never were two powers more unlike each other.

On one side was the spirit of Christianity, as it proceeded
from the heart and mind of its blessed Founder, immensely
powerful in aiding the evolution of religious thought and effort,
and especially of provision for the relief of suffering by
religious asylums and tender care. Nothing better expresses this
than the touching words inscribed upon a great medieval
hospital, "_Christo in pauperibus suis_." But on the other side
was the theological theory--proceeding, as we have seen, from the
survival of ancient superstitions, and sustained by constant
reference to the texts in our sacred books--that many, and
probably most, of the insane were possessed by the devil or in
league with him, and that the cruel treatment of lunatics was
simply punishment of the devil and his minions. By this current
of thought was gradually developed one of the greatest masses of
superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted humanity. At the
same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far as the insane
were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the beautiful
provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human
suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some
monasteries, indeed, gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable
work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the
thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in
the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the south of France,
by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the Alexian
Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of
Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort
in the Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans.
Certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming
Christian slaves, found in the fifteenth century what John Howard
found in the eighteenth, that the Arabs and Turks made a large
and merciful provision for lunatics, such as was not seen in
Christian lands; and this example led to better establishments in
Spain and Italy.

All honour to this work and to the men who engaged in it;
but, as a rule, these establishments were few and poor, compared
with those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated into
"mad-houses," where devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.[[106]]

The first main weapon against the indwelling Satan continued
to be the exorcism; but under the influence of inferences from
Scripture farther and farther fetched, and of theological
reasoning more and more subtle, it became something very
different from the gentle procedure of earlier times, and some
description of this great weapon at the time of its highest
development will throw light on the laws which govern the growth
of theological reasoning, as well as upon the main subject in hand.

A fundamental premise in the fully developed exorcism was
that, according to sacred Scripture, a main characteristic of
Satan is pride. Pride led him to rebel; for pride he was cast
down; therefore the first thing to do, in driving him out of a
lunatic, was to strike a fatal blow at his pride,--to disgust him.

This theory was carried out logically, to the letter. The
treatises on the subject simply astound one by their wealth of
blasphemous and obscene epithets which it was allowable for the
exorcist to use in casting out devils. The _Treasury of Exorcisms_
contains hundreds of pages packed with the vilest epithets which
the worst imagination could invent for the purpose of
overwhelming the indwelling Satan.[[106b]]

Some of those decent enough to be printed in these
degenerate days ran as follows:

"Thou lustful and stupid one,... thou lean sow,
famine-stricken and most impure,... thou wrinkled beast, thou
mangy beast, thou beast of all beasts the most beastly,... thou
mad spirit,... thou bestial and foolish drunkard,... most greedy
wolf,... most abominable whisperer,... thou sooty spirit from
Tartarus!... I cast thee down, O Tartarean boor, into the
infernal kitchen!... Loathsome cobbler,... dingy collier,...
filthy sow (_scrofa stercorata_),... perfidious boar,... envious
crocodile,... malodorous drudge,... wounded basilisk,...
rust-coloured asp,... swollen toad,... entangled spider,... lousy
swine-herd (_porcarie pedicose_),... lowest of the low,... cudgelled
ass," etc.

But, in addition to this attempt to disgust Satan's pride
with blackguardism, there was another to scare him with
tremendous words. For this purpose, thunderous names, from Hebrew
and Greek, were imported, such as Acharon, Eheye, Schemhamphora,
Tetragrammaton, Homoousion, Athanatos, Ischiros, AEcodes, and the
like.[[107]]

Efforts were also made to drive him out with filthy and
rank-smelling drugs; and, among those which can be mentioned in a
printed article, we may name asafoetida, sulphur, squills, etc.,
which were to be burned under his nose.

Still further to plague him, pictures of the devil were to
be spat upon, trampled under foot by people of low condition, and
sprinkled with foul compounds.

But these were merely preliminaries to the exorcism proper.
In this the most profound theological thought and sacred science
of the period culminated.

Most of its forms were childish, but some rise to almost Miltonic
grandeur. As an example of the latter, we may take the following:

"By the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to
make known unto his servants those things which are shortly to
be; and hath signified, sending by his angel,... I exorcise you,
ye angels of untold perversity!

"By the seven golden candlesticks,... and by one like unto
the Son of man, standing in the midst of the candlesticks; by his
voice, as the voice of many waters;... by his words, `I am living,
who was dead; and behold, I live forever and ever; and I have the
keys of death and of hell,' I say unto you, Depart, O angels that
show the way to eternal perdition!"

Besides these, were long litanies of billingsgate, cursing,
and threatening. One of these "scourging" exorcisms runs
partly as follows:

"May Agyos strike thee, as he did Egypt, with frogs!... May
all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and drag
thee down to hell!... May... Tetragrammaton... drive thee forth
and stone thee, as Israel did to Achan!... May the Holy One
trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done
to the five kings of the Amorites!... May God set a nail to your
skull, and pound it in with a hammer, as Jael did unto Sisera!...
May... Sother... break thy head and cut off thy hands, as was
done to the cursed Dagon!... May God hang thee in a hellish yoke,
as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul!" And so on, through
five pages of close-printed Latin curses.[[108]]

Occasionally the demon is reasoned with, as follows: "O obstinate,
accursed, fly!... why do you stop and hold back, when you know that
your strength is lost on Christ? For it is hard for thee to kick
against the pricks; and, verily, the longer it takes you to go,
the worse it will go with you. Begone, then: take flight, thou
venomous hisser, thou lying worm, thou begetter of vipers!"[[108b]]

This procedure and its results were recognised as among the
glories of the Church. As typical, we may mention an exorcism
directed by a certain Bishop of Beauvais, which was so effective
that five devils gave up possession of a sufferer and signed
their names, each for himself and his subordinate imps, to an
agreement that the possessed should be molested no more. So,
too, the Jesuit fathers at Vienna, in 1583, gloried in the fact
that in such a contest they had cast out twelve thousand six
hundred and fifty-two living devils. The ecclesiastical annals of
the Middle Ages, and, indeed, of a later period, abound in boasts
of such "mighty works."[[109]]

Such was the result of a thousand years of theological
reasoning, by the strongest minds in Europe, upon data partly
given in Scripture and partly inherited from paganism, regarding
Satan and his work among men.

Under the guidance of theology, always so severe against
"science falsely so called," the world had come a long way indeed
from the soothing treatment of the possessed by him who bore
among the noblest of his titles that of "The Great Physician."
The result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more and
more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner.

To go back for a moment to the beginnings of this unfortunate
development. In spite of the earlier and more kindly tendency
in the Church, the Synod of Ancyra, as early as 314 A. D.,
commanded the expulsion of possessed persons from the Church;
the Visigothic Christians whipped them; and Charlemagne, in spite
of some good enactments, imprisoned them. Men and women, whose
distempered minds might have been restored to health by
gentleness and skill, were driven into hopeless madness by
noxious medicines and brutality. Some few were saved as mere
lunatics--they were surrendered to general carelessness, and
became simply a prey to ridicule and aimless brutality; but vast
numbers were punished as tabernacles of Satan.

One of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps
the most common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the
body of a lunatic. This method commended itself even to the
judgment of so thoughtful and kindly a personage as Sir Thomas
More, and as late as the sixteenth century. But if the disease
continued, as it naturally would after such treatment, the
authorities frequently felt justified in driving out the demons
by torture.[[110]]

Interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil,
still exist. In the great cities of central Europe, "witch
towers," where witches and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool
towers," where the more gentle lunatics were imprisoned, may
still be seen.

In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. Devils
and imps, struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under
cornices, peer out from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals,
nestle under benches, flame in windows. Above the great main
entrance, the most common of all representations still shows
Satan and his imps scowling, jeering, grinning, while taking
possession of the souls of men and scourging them with serpents,
or driving them with tridents, or dragging them with chains into
the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and sacred
places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations of
Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these
representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the
sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known
example represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched
near the head of a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it
issues from his mouth, and only kept off by the efforts of the
attendant priest. Typical are the colossal portrait of Satan, and
the vivid picture of the devils cast out of the possessed and
entering into the swine, as shown in the cathedral-windows of
Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres Cathedral we see a
saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long devil-scaring
formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic, with a
little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing
from _his_ mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in
cathedrals and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and
all served to impress upon the popular mind a horror of
everything called diabolic, and a hatred of those charged with
it. These sermons in stones preceded the printed book; they were
a sculptured Bible, which preceded Luther's pictorial Bible.[[111]]

Satan and his imps were among the principal personages in
every popular drama, and "Hell's Mouth" was a piece of stage
scenery constantly brought into requisition. A miracle-play
without a full display of the diabolic element in it would have
stood a fair chance of being pelted from the stage.[[111b]]

Not only the popular art but the popular legends embodied
these ideas. The chroniclers delighted in them; the _Lives of the
Saints_ abounded in them; sermons enforced them from every pulpit.
What wonder, then, that men and women had vivid dreams of Satanic
influence, that dread of it was like dread of the plague, and
that this terror spread the disease enormously, until we hear of
convents, villages, and even large districts, ravaged by
epidemics of diabolical possession![[112]]

And this terror naturally bred not only active cruelty
toward those supposed to be possessed, but indifference to the
sufferings of those acknowledged to be lunatics. As we have
already seen, while ample and beautiful provision was made for
every other form of human suffering, for this there was
comparatively little; and, indeed, even this little was generally
worse than none. Of this indifference and cruelty we have a
striking monument in a single English word--a word originally
significant of gentleness and mercy, but which became significant
of wild riot, brutality, and confusion-- Bethlehem Hospital
became "Bedlam."

Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the most
touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great French
master, representing a tender woman bound to a column and exposed
to the jeers, insults, and missiles of street ruffians.[[112b]]

Here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose who attempted
to promote a more humane view, but with little effect. One expositor
of St. Matthew, having ventured to recall the fact that some of the
insane were spoken of in the New Testament as lunatics and to
suggest that their madness might be caused by the moon, was
answered that their madness was not caused by the moon, but by
the devil, who avails himself of the moonlight for his work.[[112c]]

One result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially
aggravated and spread mental disease: the promotion of great
religious processions. Troops of men and women, crying, howling,
imploring saints, and beating themselves with whips, visited
various sacred shrines, images, and places in the hope of driving
off the powers of evil. The only result was an increase in the
numbers of the diseased.

For hundreds of years this idea of diabolic possession was
steadily developed. It was believed that devils entered into
animals, and animals were accordingly exorcised, tried, tortured,
convicted, and executed. The great St. Ambrose tells us that a
priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of frogs
in a neighbouring marsh; that he exorcised them, and so stopped
their noise. St. Bernard, as the monkish chroniclers tell us,
mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted by a
cloud of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred formula
of excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the pavement in
heaps, and were cast out with shovels! A formula of exorcism
attributed to a saint of the ninth century, which remained in use
down to a recent period, especially declares insects injurious to
crops to be possessed of evil spirits, and names, among the
animals to be excommunicated or exorcised, mice, moles, and
serpents. The use of exorcism against caterpillars and
grasshoppers was also common. In the thirteenth century a Bishop
of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake Leman troubled the
fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty by exorcism, and
two centuries later one of his successors excommunicated all the
May-bugs in the diocese. As late as 1731 there appears an entry
on the Municipal Register of Thonon as follows: "_Resolved_, That
this town join with other parishes of this province in obtaining
from Rome an excommunication against the insects, and that it
will contribute _pro rata_ to the expenses of the same."

Did any one venture to deny that animals could be possessed
by Satan, he was at once silenced by reference to the entrance of
Satan into the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and to the casting
of devils into swine by the Founder of Christianity himself.[[113]]

One part of this superstition most tenaciously held was the
belief that a human being could be transformed into one of the
lower animals. This became a fundamental point. The most dreaded
of predatory animals in the Middle Ages were the wolves. Driven
from the hills and forests in the winter by hunger, they not only
devoured the flocks, but sometimes came into the villages and
seized children. From time to time men and women whose brains
were disordered dreamed that they had been changed into various
animals, and especially into wolves. On their confessing this,
and often implicating others, many executions of lunatics
resulted; moreover, countless sane victims, suspected of the same
impossible crime, were forced by torture to confess it, and sent
unpitied to the stake. The belief in such a transformation
pervaded all Europe, and lasted long even in Protestant countries.
Probably no article in the witch creed had more adherents in the
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries than this. Nearly
every parish in Europe had its resultant horrors.

The reformed Church in all its branches fully accepted the
doctrines of witchcraft and diabolic possession, and developed
them still further. No one urged their fundamental ideas more
fully than Luther. He did, indeed, reject portions of the
witchcraft folly; but to the influence of devils he not only
attributed his maladies, but his dreams, and nearly everything
that thwarted or disturbed him. The flies which lighted upon his
book, the rats which kept him awake at night, he believed to be
devils; the resistance of the Archbishop of Mayence to his ideas,
he attributed to Satan literally working in that prelate's heart;
to his disciples he told stories of men who had been killed by
rashly resisting the devil. Insanity, he was quite sure, was
caused by Satan, and he exorcised sufferers. Against some he
appears to have advised stronger remedies; and his horror of
idiocy, as resulting from Satanic influence, was so great, that
on one occasion he appears to have advised the killing of an
idiot child, as being the direct offspring of Satan. Yet Luther
was one of the most tender and loving of men; in the whole range
of literature there is hardly anything more touching than his
words and tributes to children. In enforcing his ideas regarding
insanity, he laid stress especially upon the question of St. Paul
as to the bewitching of the Galatians, and, regarding idiocy, on
the account in Genesis of the birth of children whose fathers
were "sons of God" and whose mothers were "daughters of men."

One idea of his was especially characteristic. The descent
of Christ into hell was a frequent topic of discussion in the
Reformed Church. Melanchthon, with his love of Greek studies,
held that the purpose of the Saviour in making such a descent was
to make himself known to the great and noble men of
antiquity--Plato, Socrates, and the rest; but Luther insisted
that his purpose was to conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand struggle.

This idea of diabolic influence pervaded his conversation, his
preaching, his writings, and spread thence to the Lutheran
Church in general.

Calvin also held to the same theory, and, having more power
with less kindness of heart than Luther, carried it out with yet
greater harshness. Beza was especially severe against those who
believed insanity to be a natural malady, and declared, "Such
persons are refuted both by sacred and profane history."

Under the influence, then, of such infallible teachings, in
the older Church and in the new, this superstition was developed
more and more into cruelty; and as the biblical texts,
popularized in the sculptures and windows and mural decorations
of the great medieval cathedrals, had done much to develop it
among the people, so Luther's translation of the Bible,
especially in the numerous editions of it illustrated with
engravings, wrought with enormous power to spread and deepen it.
In every peasant's cottage some one could spell out the story of
the devil bearing Christ through the air and placing him upon the
pinnacle of the Temple--of the woman with seven devils--of the
devils cast into the swine. Every peasant's child could be made
to understand the quaint pictures in the family Bible or the
catechism which illustrated vividly all those texts. In the ideas
thus deeply implanted, the men who in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries struggled against this mass of folly and
cruelty found the worst barrier to right reason.[[115]]

Such was the treatment of demoniacs developed by theology,
and such the practice enforced by ecclesiasticism for more than a
thousand years.

How an atmosphere was spread in which this belief began to
dissolve away, how its main foundations were undermined by
science, and how there came in gradually a reign of humanity,
will now be related.


           II. BEGINNINGS OF A HEALTHFUL SCEPTICISM.

We have now seen the culmination of the old procedure
regarding insanity, as it was developed under theology and
enforced by ecclesiasticism; and we have noted how, under the
influence of Luther and Calvin, the Reformation rather deepened
than weakened the faith in the malice and power of a personal
devil. Nor was this, in the Reformed churches any more than in
the old, mere matter of theory. As in the early ages of
Christianity, its priests especially appealed, in proof of the
divine mission, to their power over the enemy of mankind in the
bodies of men, so now the clergy of the rival creeds eagerly
sought opportunities to establish the truth of their own and the
falsehood of their opponents' doctrines by the visible casting
out of devils. True, their methods differed somewhat: where the
Catholic used holy water and consecrated wax, the Protestant was
content with texts of Scripture and importunate prayer; but the
supplementary physical annoyance of the indwelling demon did not
greatly vary. Sharp was the competition for the unhappy objects
of treatment. Each side, of course, stoutly denied all efficacy
to its adversaries' efforts, urging that any seeming victory over
Satan was due not to the defeat but to the collusion of the
fiend. As, according to the Master himself, "no man can by
Beelzebub cast out devils," the patient was now in greater need
of relief than before; and more than one poor victim had to bear
alternately Lutheran, Roman, and perhaps Calvinistic exorcism.[[117]]

But far more serious in its consequences was another rivalry
to which in the sixteenth century the clergy of all creeds found
themselves subject. The revival of the science of medicine, under
the impulse of the new study of antiquity, suddenly bade fair to
take out of the hands of the Church the profession of which she
had enjoyed so long and so profitable a monopoly. Only one class
of diseases remained unquestionably hers--those which were still
admitted to be due to the direct personal interference of
Satan--and foremost among these was insanity.[[117b]] It was surely
no wonder that an age of religious controversy and excitement
should be exceptionally prolific in ailments of the mind; and, to
men who mutually taught the utter futility of that baptismal
exorcism by which the babes of their misguided neighbours were
made to renounce the devil and his works, it ought not to have
seemed strange that his victims now became more numerous.[[117c]]
But so simple an explanation did not satisfy these physicians of
souls; they therefore devised a simpler one: their patients, they
alleged, were bewitched, and their increase was due to the
growing numbers of those human allies of Satan known as witches.

Already, before the close of the fifteenth century, Pope
innocent VIII had issued the startling bull by which he called on
the archbishops, bishops, and other clergy of Germany to join
hands with his inquisitors in rooting out these willing
bond-servants of Satan, who were said to swarm throughout all
that country and to revel in the blackest crimes. Other popes had
since reiterated the appeal; and, though none of these documents
touched on the blame of witchcraft for diabolic possession, the
inquisitors charged with their execution pointed it out most
clearly in their fearful handbook, the _Witch-Hammer_, and
prescribed the special means by which possession thus caused
should be met. These teachings took firm root in religious minds
everywhere; and during the great age of witch-burning that
followed the Reformation it may well be doubted whether any
single cause so often gave rise to an outbreak of the persecution
as the alleged bewitchment of some poor mad or foolish or
hysterical creature. The persecution, thus once under way, fed
itself; for, under the terrible doctrine of "excepted cases," by
which in the religious crimes of heresy and witchcraft there was
no limit to the use of torture, the witch was forced to confess
to accomplices, who in turn accused others, and so on to the end
of the chapter.[[118]]

The horrors of such a persecution, with the consciousness of
an ever-present devil it breathed and the panic terror of him it
inspired, could not but aggravate the insanity it claimed to
cure. Well-authenticated, though rarer than is often believed,
were the cases where crazed women voluntarily accused themselves
of this impossible crime. One of the most eminent authorities on
diseases of the mind declares that among the unfortunate beings
who were put to death for witchcraft he recognises well-marked
victims of cerebral disorders; while an equally eminent authority
in Germany tells us that, in a most careful study of the original
records of their trials by torture, he has often found their
answers and recorded conversations exactly like those familiar to
him in our modern lunatic asylums, and names some forms of
insanity which constantly and un mistakably appear among those
who suffered for criminal dealings with the devil.[[119]]

The result of this widespread terror was naturally, therefore,
a steady increase in mental disorders. A great modern
authority tells us that, although modern civilization tends to
increase insanity, the number of lunatics at present is far less
than in the ages of faith and in the Reformation period. The
treatment of the "possessed," as we find it laid down in standard
treatises, sanctioned by orthodox churchmen and jurists, accounts
for this abundantly. One sort of treatment used for those accused
of witchcraft will also serve to show this--the "_tortura
insomniae_." Of all things in brain-disease, calm and regular
sleep is most certainly beneficial; yet, under this practice,
these half-crazed creatures were prevented, night after night and
day after day, from sleeping or even resting. In this way
temporary delusion became chronic insanity, mild cases became
violent, torture and death ensued, and the "ways of God to man"
were justified.[[119b]]

But the most contemptible creatures in all those centuries
were the physicians who took sides with religious orthodoxy.
While we have, on the side of truth, Flade sacrificing his life,
Cornelius Agrippa his liberty, Wier and Loos their hopes of
preferment, Bekker his position, and Thomasius his ease,
reputation, and friends, we find, as allies of the other side, a
troop of eminently respectable doctors mixing Scripture,
metaphysics, and pretended observations to support the "safe
side" and to deprecate interference with the existing
superstition, which seemed to them "a very safe belief to be held
by the common people."[[119c]]

Against one form of insanity both Catholics and Protestants were
especially cruel. Nothing is more common in all times of religious
excitement than strange personal hallucinations, involving the
belief, by the insane patient, that he is a divine person. In the
most striking representation of insanity that has ever been made,
Kaulbach shows, at the centre of his wonderful group, a patient
drawing attention to himself as the Saviour of the world.

Sometimes, when this form of disease took a milder
hysterical character, the subject of it was treated with
reverence, and even elevated to sainthood: such examples as St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena in Italy, St.
Bridget in Sweden, St. Theresa in Spain, St. Mary Alacoque in
France, and Louise Lateau in Belgium, are typical. But more
frequently such cases shocked public feeling, and were treated
with especial rigour: typical of this is the case of Simon
Marin, who in his insanity believed himself to be the Son of God,
and was on that account burned alive at Paris and his ashes
scattered to the winds.[[120]]

The profundity of theologians and jurists constantly
developed new theories as to the modes of diabolic entrance into
the "possessed." One such theory was that Satan could be taken
into the mouth with one's food--perhaps in the form of an insect
swallowed on a leaf of salad, and this was sanctioned, as we have
seen, by no less infallible an authority than Gregory the Great,
Pope and Saint--Another theory was that Satan entered the body
when the mouth was opened to breathe, and there are
well-authenticated cases of doctors and divines who, when casting
out evil spirits, took especial care lest the imp might jump into
their own mouths from the mouth of the patient. Another theory
was that the devil entered human beings during sleep; and at a
comparatively recent period a King of Spain was wont to sleep
between two monks, to keep off the devil.[[121]]

The monasteries were frequent sources of that form of mental
disease which was supposed to be caused by bewitchment. From the
earliest period it is evident that monastic life tended to
develop insanity. Such cases as that of St. Anthony are typical
of its effects upon the strongest minds; but it was especially
the convents for women that became the great breeding-beds of
this disease. Among the large numbers of women and girls thus
assembled--many of them forced into monastic seclusion against
their will, for the reason that their families could give them no
dower--subjected to the unsatisfied longings, suspicions,
bickerings, petty jealousies, envies, and hatreds, so inevitable
in convent life--mental disease was not unlikely to be developed
at any moment. Hysterical excitement in nunneries took shapes
sometimes comical, but more generally tragical. Noteworthy is it
that the last places where executions for witchcraft took place
were mainly in the neighbourhood of great nunneries; and the last
famous victim, of the myriads executed in Germany for this
imaginary crime, was Sister Anna Renata Singer, sub-prioress of a
nunnery near Wurzburg.[[121b]]

The same thing was seen among young women exposed to sundry
fanatical Protestant preachers. Insanity, both temporary and
permanent, was thus frequently developed among the Huguenots of
France, and has been thus produced in America, from the days of
the Salem persecution down to the "camp meetings" of the present
time.[[121c]]

At various times, from the days of St. Agobard of Lyons in
the ninth century to Pomponatius in the sixteenth, protests or
suggestions, more or less timid, had been made by thoughtful men
against this system. Medicine had made some advance toward a
better view, but the theological torrent had generally
overwhelmed all who supported a scientific treatment. At last,
toward the end of the sixteenth century, two men made a beginning
of a much more serious attack upon this venerable superstition.
The revival of learning, and the impulse to thought on material
matters given during the "age of discovery," undoubtedly produced
an atmosphere which made the work of these men possible. In the
year 1563, in the midst of demonstrations of demoniacal
possession by the most eminent theologians and judges, who sat in
their robes and looked wise, while women, shrieking, praying, and
blaspheming, were put to the torture, a man arose who dared to
protest effectively that some of the persons thus charged might
be simply insane; and this man was John Wier, of Cleves.

His protest does not at this day strike us as particularly
bold. In his books, _De Praestigiis Daemonum_ and _De Lamiis_, he
did his best not to offend religious or theological
susceptibilities; but he felt obliged to call attention to the
mingled fraud and delusion of those who claimed to be bewitched,
and to point out that it was often not their accusers, but the
alleged witches themselves, who were really ailing, and to urge
that these be brought first of all to a physician.

His book was at once attacked by the most eminent
theologians. One of the greatest laymen of his time, Jean Bodin,
also wrote with especial power against it, and by a plentiful use
of scriptural texts gained to all appearance a complete victory:
this superstition seemed thus fastened upon Europe for a thousand
years more. But doubt was in the air, and, about a quarter of a
century after the publication of Wier's book there were published
in France the essays of a man by no means so noble, but of far
greater genius--Michel de Montaigne. The general scepticism which
his work promoted among the French people did much to produce an
atmosphere in which the belief in witchcraft and demoniacal
possession must inevitably wither. But this process, though real,
was hidden, and the victory still seemed on the theological side.

The development of the new truth and its struggle against
the old error still went on. In Holland, Balthazar Bekker wrote
his book against the worst forms of the superstition, and
attempted to help the scientific side by a text from the Second
Epistle of St. Peter, showing that the devils had been confined
by the Almighty, and therefore could not be doing on earth the
work which was imputed to them. But Bekker's Protestant brethren
drove him from his pulpit, and he narrowly escaped with his life.

The last struggles of a great superstition are very
frequently the worst. So it proved in this case. In the first
half of the seventeenth century the cruelties arising from the
old doctrine were more numerous and severe than ever before. In
Spain, Sweden, Italy, and, above all, in Germany, we see constant
efforts to suppress the evolution of the new truth.

But in the midst of all this reactionary rage glimpses of
right reason began to appear. It is significant that at this very
time, when the old superstition was apparently everywhere
triumphant, the declaration by Poulet that he and his brother and
his cousin had, by smearing themselves with ointment, changed
themselves into wolves and devoured children, brought no severe
punishment upon them. The judges sent him to a mad-house. More
and more, in spite of frantic efforts from the pulpit to save the
superstition, great writers and jurists, especially in France,
began to have glimpses of the truth and courage to uphold it.
Malebranche spoke against the delusion; Seguier led the French
courts to annul several decrees condemning sorcerers; the great
chancellor, D'Aguesseau, declared to the Parliament of Paris
that, if they wished to stop sorcery, they must stop talking
about it--that sorcerers are more to be pitied than blamed.[[123]]

But just at this time, as the eighteenth century was
approaching, the theological current was strengthened by a great
ecclesiastic--the greatest theologian that France has produced,
whose influence upon religion and upon the mind of Louis XIV was
enormous--Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. There had been reason to
expect that Bossuet would at least do something to mitigate the
superstition; for his writings show that, in much which before
his day had been ascribed to diabolic possession, he saw simple
lunacy. Unfortunately, the same adherence to the literal
interpretation of Scripture which led him to oppose every other
scientific truth developed in his time, led him also to attack
this: he delivered and published two great sermons, which, while
showing some progress in the form of his belief, showed none the
less that the fundamental idea of diabolic possession was still
to be tenaciously held. What this idea was may be seen in one
typical statement: he declared that "a single devil could turn
the earth round as easily as we turn a marble."[[124]]


           III. THE FINAL STRUGGLE AND VICTORY OF SCIENCE.--
                           PINEL AND TUKE.

The theological current, thus re-enforced, seemed to become
again irresistible; but it was only so in appearance. In spite of
it, French scepticism continued to develop; signs of quiet change
among the mass of thinking men were appearing more and more; and
in 1672 came one of great significance, for, the Parliament of
Rouen having doomed fourteen sorcerers to be burned, their
execution was delayed for two years, evidently on account of
scepticism among officials; and at length the great minister of
Louis XIV, Colbert, issued an edict checking such trials, and
ordering the convicted to be treated for madness.

Victory seemed now to incline to the standard of science,
and in 1725 no less a personage than St. Andre, a court
physician, dared to publish a work virtually showing "demoniacal
possession" to be lunacy.

The French philosophy, from the time of its early
development in the eighteenth century under Montesquieu and
Voltaire, naturally strengthened the movement; the results of
_post-mortem_ examinations of the brains of the "possessed"
confirmed it; and in 1768 we see it take form in a declaration by
the Parliament of Paris, that possessed persons were to be
considered as simply diseased. Still, the old belief lingered on,
its life flickering up from time to time in those parts of France
most under ecclesiastical control, until in these last years of
the nineteenth century a blow has been given it by the researches
of Charcot and his compeers which will probably soon extinguish
it. One evidence of Satanic intercourse with mankind especially,
on which for many generations theologians had laid peculiar
stress, and for which they had condemned scores of little girls
and hundreds of old women to a most cruel death, was found to be
nothing more than one of the many results of hysteria.[[125]]

In England the same warfare went on. John Locke had asserted
the truth, but the theological view continued to control public
opinion. Most prominent among those who exercised great power in
its behalf was John Wesley, and the strength and beauty of his
character made his influence in this respect all the more
unfortunate. The same servitude to the mere letter of Scripture
which led him to declare that "to give up witchcraft is to give
up the Bible," controlled him in regard to insanity. He insisted,
on the authority of the Old Testament, that bodily diseases are
sometimes caused by devils, and, upon the authority of the New
Testament, that the gods of the heathen are demons; he believed
that dreams, while in some cases caused by bodily conditions and
passions, are shown by Scripture to be also caused by occult
powers of evil; he cites a physician to prove that "most lunatics
are really demoniacs." In his great sermon on _Evil Angels_, he
dwells upon this point especially; resists the idea that
"possession" may be epilepsy, even though ordinary symptoms of
epilepsy be present; protests against "giving up to infidels such
proofs of an invisible world as are to be found in diabolic
possession"; and evidently believes that some who have been made
hysterical by his own preaching are "possessed of Satan." On all
this, and much more to the same effect, he insisted with all the
power given to him by his deep religious nature, his wonderful
familiarity with the Scriptures, his natural acumen, and his eloquence.

But here, too, science continued its work. The old belief
was steadily undermined, an atmosphere favourable to the truth
was more and more developed, and the act of Parliament, in 1735,
which banished the crime of witchcraft from the statute book, was
the beginning of the end.

In Germany we see the beginnings of a similar triumph for
science. In Prussia, that sturdy old monarch, Frederick William I,
nullified the efforts of the more zealous clergy and orthodox
jurists to keep up the old doctrine in his dominions; throughout
Protestant Germany, where it had raged most severely, it was, as
a rule, cast out of the Church formulas, catechisms, and hymns,
and became more and more a subject for jocose allusion. From
force of habit, and for the sake of consistency, some of the more
conservative theologians continued to repeat the old arguments,
and there were many who insisted upon the belief as absolutely
necessary to ordinary orthodoxy; but it is evident that it had
become a mere conventionality, that men only believed that they
believed it, and now a reform seemed possible in the treatment of
the insane.[[126]]

In Austria, the government set Dr. Antonio Haen at making
careful researches into the causes of diabolic possession. He did
not think it best, in view of the power of the Church, to dispute
the possibility or probability of such cases, but simply decided,
after thorough investigation, that out of the many cases which
had been brought to him, not one supported the belief in
demoniacal influence. An attempt was made to follow up this
examination, and much was done by men like Francke and Van
Swieten, and especially by the reforming emperor, Joseph II, to
rescue men and women who would otherwise have fallen victims to
the prevalent superstition. Unfortunately, Joseph had arrayed
against himself the whole power of the Church, and most of his
good efforts seemed brought to naught. But what the noblest of
the old race of German emperors could not do suddenly, the German
men of science did gradually. Quietly and thoroughly, by proofs
that could not be gainsaid, they recovered the old scientific
fact established in pagan Greece and Rome, that madness is simply
physical disease. But they now established it on a basis that can
never again be shaken; for, in _post-mortem_ examinations of large
numbers of "possessed" persons, they found evidence of
brain-disease. Typical is a case at Hamburg in 1729. An afflicted
woman showed in a high degree all the recognised characteristics
of diabolic possession: exorcisms, preachings, and sanctified
remedies of every sort were tried in vain; milder medical means
were then tried, and she so far recovered that she was allowed to
take the communion before she died: the autopsy, held in the
presence of fifteen physicians and a public notary, showed it to
be simply a case of chronic meningitis. The work of German men of
science in this field is noble indeed; a great succession, from
Wier to Virchow, have erected a barrier against which all the
efforts of reactionists beat in vain.[[127]]

In America, the belief in diabolic influence had, in the
early colonial period, full control. The Mathers, so superior to
their time in many things, were children of their time in this:
they supported the belief fully, and the Salem witchcraft horrors
were among its results; but the discussion of that folly by Calef
struck it a severe blow, and a better influence spread rapidly
throughout the colonies.

By the middle of the eighteenth century belief in diabolic
possession had practically disappeared from all enlightened
countries, and during the nineteenth century it has lost its hold
even in regions where the medieval spirit continues strongest.
Throughout the Middle Ages, as we have seen, Satan was a leading
personage in the miracle-plays, but in 1810 the Bavarian
Government refused to allow the Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau if
Satan was permitted to take any part in it; in spite of heroic
efforts to maintain the old belief, even the childlike faith of
the Tyrolese had arrived at a point which made a representation
of Satan simply a thing to provoke laughter.

Very significant also was the trial which took place at
Wemding, in southern Germany, in 1892. A boy had become
hysterical, and the Capuchin Father Aurelian tried to exorcise
him, and charged a peasant's wife, Frau Herz, with bewitching
him, on evidence that would have cost the woman her life at any
time during the seventeenth century. Thereupon the woman's
husband brought suit against Father Aurelian for slander. The
latter urged in his defence that the boy was possessed of an evil
spirit, if anybody ever was; that what had been said and done was
in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Church, as
laid down in decrees, formulas, and rituals sanctioned by popes,
councils, and innumerable bishops during ages. All in vain. The
court condemned the good father to fine and imprisonment. As in a
famous English case, "hell was dismissed, with costs." Even more
significant is the fact that recently a boy declared by two
Bavarian priests to be possessed by the devil, was taken, after
all Church exorcisms had failed, to Father Kneipp's hydropathic
establishment and was there speedily cured.[[128]]

But, although the old superstition had been discarded, the
inevitable conservatism in theology and medicine caused many old
abuses to be continued for years after the theological basis for
them had really disappeared. There still lingered also a feeling
of dislike toward madmen, engendered by the early feeling of
hostility toward them, which sufficed to prevent for many years
any practical reforms.

What that old theory had been, even under the most
favourable circumstances and among the best of men, we have seen
in the fact that Sir Thomas More ordered acknowledged lunatics to
be publicly flogged; and it will be remembered that Shakespeare
makes one of his characters refer to madmen as deserving "a dark
house and a whip." What the old practice was and continued to be
we know but too well. Taking Protestant England as an
example--and it was probably the most humane--we have a chain of
testimony. Toward the end of the sixteenth century, Bethlehem
Hospital was reported too loathsome for any man to enter; in the
seventeenth century, John Evelyn found it no better; in the
eighteenth, Hogarth's pictures and contemporary reports show it to
be essentially what it had been in those previous centuries.[[129]]

The first humane impulse of any considerable importance in
this field seems to have been aroused in America. In the year
1751 certain members of the Society of Friends founded a small
hospital for the insane, on better principles, in Pennsylvania.
To use the language of its founders, it was intended "as a good
work, acceptable to God." Twenty years later Virginia established
a similar asylum, and gradually others appeared in other colonies.

But it was in France that mercy was to be put upon a
scientific basis, and was to lead to practical results which were
to convert the world to humanity. In this case, as in so many
others, from France was spread and popularized not only the
scepticism which destroyed the theological theory, but also the
devotion which built up the new scientific theory and endowed the
world with a new treasure of civilization.

In 1756 some physicians of the great hospital at Paris known
as the Hotel-Dieu protested that the cruelties prevailing in the
treatment of the insane were aggravating the disease; and some
protests followed from other quarters. Little effect was produced
at first; but just before the French Revolution, Tenon, La
Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, and others took up the subject, and in
1791 a commission was appointed to undertake a reform.

By great good fortune, the man selected to lead in the
movement was one who had already thrown his heart into it--Jean
Baptiste Pinel. In 1792 Pinel was made physician at Bicetre, one
of the most extensive lunatic asylums in France, and to the work
there imposed upon him he gave all his powers. Little was heard
of him at first. The most terrible scenes of the French
Revolution were drawing nigh; but he laboured on, modestly and
devotedly--apparently without a thought of the great political
storm raging about him.

His first step was to discard utterly the whole theological
doctrine of "possession," and especially the idea that insanity
is the result of any subtle spiritual influence. He simply put in
practice the theory that lunacy is the result of bodily disease.

It is a curious matter for reflection, that but for this sway
of the destructive philosophy of the eighteenth century, and
of the Terrorists during the French Revolution, Pinel's blessed
work would in all probability have been thwarted, and he himself
excommunicated for heresy and driven from his position. Doubtless
the same efforts would have been put forth against him which the
Church, a little earlier, had put forth against inoculation as a
remedy for smallpox; but just at that time the great churchmen
had other things to think of besides crushing this particular
heretic: they were too much occupied in keeping their own heads
from the guillotine to give attention to what was passing in the
head of Pinel. He was allowed to work in peace, and in a short
time the reign of diabolism at Bicetre was ended. What the
exorcisms and fetiches and prayers and processions, and drinking
of holy water, and ringing of bells, had been unable to
accomplish during eighteen hundred years, he achieved in a few
months. His method was simple: for the brutality and cruelty
which had prevailed up to that time, he substituted kindness and
gentleness. The possessed were taken out of their dungeons, given
sunny rooms, and allowed the liberty of pleasant ground for
exercise; chains were thrown aside. At the same time, the mental
power of each patient was developed by its fitting exercise, and
disease was met with remedies sanctioned by experiment, observation,
and reason. Thus was gained one of the greatest, though one of
the least known, triumphs of modern science and humanity.

The results obtained by Pinel had an instant effect, not
only in France but throughout Europe: the news spread from
hospital to hospital. At his death, Esquirol took up his work;
and, in the place of the old training of judges, torturers, and
executioners by theology to carry out its ideas in cruelty, there
was now trained a school of physicians to develop science in this
field and carry out its decrees in mercy.[[132]]

A similar evolution of better science and practice took
place in England. In spite of the coldness, and even hostility,
of the greater men in the Established Church, and notwithstanding
the scriptural demonstrations of Wesley that the majority of the
insane were possessed of devils, the scientific method steadily
gathered strength. In 1750 the condition of the insane began to
attract especial attention; it was found that mad-houses were
swayed by ideas utterly indefensible, and that the practices
engendered by these ideas were monstrous. As a rule, the patients
were immured in cells, and in many cases were chained to the
walls; in others, flogging and starvation played leading parts,
and in some cases the patients were killed. Naturally enough,
John Howard declared, in 1789, that he found in Constantinople a
better insane asylum than the great St. Luke's Hospital in London.
Well might he do so; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected and
encouraged the scientific investigation of insanity by Paul of
AEgina, the Moslem treatment of the insane had been far more
merciful than the system prevailing throughout Christendom.[[132b]]

In 1792--the same year in which Pinel began his great work
in France--William Tuke began a similar work in England. There
seems to have been no connection between these two reformers;
each wrought independently of the other, but the results arrived
at were the same. So, too, in the main, were their methods; and
in the little house of William Tuke, at York, began a better era
for England.

The name which this little asylum received is a monument
both of the old reign of cruelty and of the new reign of
humanity. Every old name for such an asylum had been made odious
and repulsive by ages of misery; in a happy moment of inspiration
Tuke's gentle Quaker wife suggested a new name; and, in accordance
with this suggestion, the place became known as a "Retreat."

From the great body of influential classes in church and
state Tuke received little aid. The influence of the theological
spirit was shown when, in that same year, Dr. Pangster published
his _Observations on Mental Disorders_, and, after displaying much
ignorance as to the causes and nature of insanity, summed up by
saying piously, "Here our researches must stop, and we must
declare that `wonderful are the works of the Lord, and his ways
past finding out.'" Such seemed to be the view of the Church at
large: though the new "Retreat" was at one of the two great
ecclesiastical centres of England, we hear of no aid or
encouragement from the Archbishop of York or from his clergy. Nor
was this the worst: the indirect influence of the theological
habit of thought and ecclesiastical prestige was displayed in the
_Edinburgh Review_. That great organ of opinion, not content with
attacking Tuke, poured contempt upon his work, as well as on that
of Pinel. A few of Tuke's brother and sister Quakers seem to have
been his only reliance; and in a letter regarding his efforts at
that time he says, "All men seem to desert me."[[133]]

In this atmosphere of English conservative opposition or
indifference the work could not grow rapidly. As late as 1815, a
member of Parliament stigmatized the insane asylums of England as
the shame of the nation; and even as late as 1827, and in a few
cases as late as 1850, there were revivals of the old absurdity
and brutality. Down to a late period, in the hospitals of St.
Luke and Bedlam, long rows of the insane were chained to the
walls of the corridors. But Gardner at Lincoln, Donnelly at
Hanwell, and a new school of practitioners in mental disease,
took up the work of Tuke, and the victory in England was gained
in practice as it had been previously gained in theory.

There need be no controversy regarding the comparative
merits of these two benefactors of our race, Pinel and Tuke. They
clearly did their thinking and their work independently of each
other, and thereby each strengthened the other and benefited
mankind. All that remains to be said is, that while France has
paid high honours to Pinel, as to one who did much to free the
world from one of its most cruel superstitions and to bring in a
reign of humanity over a wide empire, England has as yet made no
fitting commemoration of her great benefactor in this field. York
Minster holds many tombs of men, of whom some were blessings to
their fellow-beings, while some were but "solemnly constituted
impostors" and parasites upon the body politic; yet, to this
hour, that great temple has received no consecration by a
monument to the man who did more to alleviate human misery than
any other who has ever entered it.

But the place of these two men in history is secure. They
stand with Grotius, Thomasius, and Beccaria--the men who in
modern times have done most to prevent unmerited sorrow. They
were not, indeed, called to suffer like their great compeers;
they were not obliged to see their writings--among the most
blessed gifts of God to man--condemned, as were those of Grotius
and Beccaria by the Catholic Church, and those of Thomasius by a
large section of the Protestant Church; they were not obliged to
flee for their lives, as were Grotius and Thomasius; but their
effort is none the less worthy. The French Revolution, indeed,
saved Pinel, and the decay of English ecclesiasticism gave Tuke
his opportunity; but their triumphs are none the less among the
glories of our race; for they were the first acknowledged victors
in a struggle of science for humanity which had lasted nearly two
thousand years.


                               CHAPTER XVI.
                        FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.

                     I. THE EPIDEMICS OF "POSSESSION."

IN the foregoing chapter I have sketched the triumph of
science in destroying the idea that individual lunatics are
"possessed by devils," in establishing the truth that insanity is
physical disease, and in substituting for superstitious cruelties
toward the insane a treatment mild, kindly, and based upon
ascertained facts.

The Satan who had so long troubled individual men and women
thus became extinct; henceforth his fossil remains only were
preserved: they may still be found in the sculptures and storied
windows of medieval churches, in sundry liturgies, and in popular
forms of speech.

But another Satan still lived--a Satan who wrought on a
larger scale--who took possession of multitudes. For, after this
triumph of the scientific method, there still remained a class of
mental disorders which could not be treated in asylums, which
were not yet fully explained by science, and which therefore gave
arguments of much apparent strength to the supporters of the old
theological view: these were the epidemics of "diabolic possession"
which for so many centuries afflicted various parts of the world.

When obliged, then, to retreat from their old position in
regard to individual cases of insanity, the more conservative
theologians promptly referred to these epidemics as beyond the
domain of science--as clear evidences of the power of Satan;
and, as the basis of this view, they cited from the Old Testament
frequent references to witchcraft, and, from the New Testament,
St. Paul's question as to the possible bewitching of the Galatians,
and the bewitching of the people of Samaria by Simon the Magician.

Naturally, such leaders had very many adherents in that
class, so large in all times, who find that


            "To follow foolish precedents and wink
             With both our eyes, is easier than to think."[[136]]


It must be owned that their case seemed strong. Though in all
human history, so far as it is closely known, these phenomena
had appeared, and though every classical scholar could recall the
wild orgies of the priests, priestesses, and devotees of Dionysus
and Cybele, and the epidemic of wild rage which took its name
from some of these, the great fathers and doctors of the Church
had left a complete answer to any scepticism based on these
facts; they simply pointed to St. Paul's declaration that the
gods of the heathen were devils: these examples, then, could be
transformed into a powerful argument for diabolic possession.[[136b]]

But it was more especially the epidemics of diabolism in
medieval and modern times which gave strength to the theological
view, and from these I shall present a chain of typical examples.

As early as the eleventh century we find clear accounts of
diabolical possession taking the form of epidemics of raving,
jumping, dancing, and convulsions, the greater number of the
sufferers being women and children. In a time so rude, accounts
of these manifestations would rarely receive permanent record;
but it is very significant that even at the beginning of the
eleventh century we hear of them at the extremes of Europe--in
northern Germany and in southern Italy. At various times during
that century we get additional glimpses of these exhibitions, but
it is not until the beginning of the thirteenth century that we
have a renewal of them on a large scale. In 1237, at Erfurt, a
jumping disease and dancing mania afflicted a hundred children,
many of whom died in consequence; it spread through the whole
region, and fifty years later we hear of it in Holland.

But it was the last quarter of the fourteenth century that
saw its greatest manifestations. There was abundant cause for
them. It was a time of oppression, famine, and pestilence: the
crusading spirit, having run its course, had been succeeded by a
wild, mystical fanaticism; the most frightful plague in human
history--the Black Death--was depopulating whole
regions--reducing cities to villages, and filling Europe with
that strange mixture of devotion and dissipation which we always
note during the prevalence of deadly epidemics on a large scale.

It was in this ferment of religious, moral, and social
disease that there broke out in 1374, in the lower Rhine region,
the greatest, perhaps, of all manifestations of "possession"--an
epidemic of dancing, jumping, and wild raving. The cures resorted
to seemed on the whole to intensify the disease: the afflicted
continued dancing for hours, until they fell in utter exhaustion.
Some declared that they felt as if bathed in blood, some saw
visions, some prophesied.

Into this mass of "possession" there was also clearly poured
a current of scoundrelism which increased the disorder.

The immediate source of these manifestations seems to have
been the wild revels of St. John's Day. In those revels sundry
old heathen ceremonies had been perpetuated, but under a
nominally Christian form: wild Bacchanalian dances had thus
become a semi-religious ceremonial. The religious and social
atmosphere was propitious to the development of the germs of
diabolic influence vitalized in these orgies, and they were
scattered far and wide through large tracts of the Netherlands
and Germany, and especially through the whole region of the
Rhine. At Cologne we hear of five hundred afflicted at once; at
Metz of eleven hundred dancers in the streets; at Strasburg of
yet more painful manifestations; and from these and other cities
they spread through the villages and rural districts.

The great majority of the sufferers were women, but there
were many men, and especially men whose occupations were
sedentary. Remedies were tried upon a large scale-exorcisms
first, but especially pilgrimages to the shrine of St. Vitus. The
exorcisms accomplished so little that popular faith in them grew
small, and the main effect of the pilgrimages seemed to be to
increase the disorder by subjecting great crowds to the diabolic
contagion. Yet another curative means was seen in the flagellant
processions--vast crowds of men, women, and children who wandered
through the country, screaming, praying, beating themselves with
whips, imploring the Divine mercy and the intervention of St.
Vitus. Most fearful of all the main attempts at cure were the
persecutions of the Jews. A feeling had evidently spread among
the people at large that the Almighty was filled with wrath at
the toleration of his enemies, and might be propitiated by their
destruction: in the principal cities and villages of Germany,
then, the Jews were plundered, tortured, and murdered by tens of
thousands. No doubt that, in all this, greed was united with
fanaticism; but the argument of fanaticism was simple and cogent;
the dart which pierced the breast of Israel at that time was
winged and pointed from its own sacred books: the biblical
argument was the same used in various ages to promote
persecution; and this was, that the wrath of the Almighty was
stirred against those who tolerated his enemies, and that because
of this toleration the same curse had now come upon Europe which
the prophet Samuel had denounced against Saul for showing mercy
to the enemies of Jehovah.

It is but just to say that various popes and kings exerted
themselves to check these cruelties. Although the argument of
Samuel to Saul was used with frightful effect two hundred years
later by a most conscientious pope in spurring on the rulers of
France to extirpate the Huguenots, the papacy in the fourteenth
century stood for mercy to the Jews. But even this intervention
was long without effect; the tide of popular Superstition had
become too strong to be curbed even by the spiritual and temporal
powers.[[138]]

Against this overwhelming current science for many
generations could do nothing. Throughout the whole of the
fifteenth century physicians appeared to shun the whole matter.
Occasionally some more thoughtful man ventured to ascribe some
phase of the disease to natural causes; but this was an unpopular
doctrine, and evidently dangerous to those who developed it.

Yet, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, cases of
"possession" on a large scale began to be brought within the scope
of medical research, and the man who led in this evolution of
medical science was Paracelsus. He it was who first bade modern
Europe think for a moment upon the idea that these diseases are
inflicted neither by saints nor demons, and that the "dancing
possession" is simply a form of disease, of which the cure may be
effected by proper remedies and regimen.

Paracelsus appears to have escaped any serious interference:
it took some time, perhaps, for the theological leaders to
understand that he had "let a new idea loose upon the planet,"
but they soon understood it, and their course was simple. For
about fifty years the new idea was well kept under; but in 1563
another physician, John Wier, of Cleves, revived it at much risk
to his position and reputation.[[139]]

Although the new idea was thus resisted, it must have taken
some hold upon thoughtful men, for we find that in the second
half of the same century the St. Vitus's dance and forms of
demoniacal possession akin to it gradually diminished in
frequency and were sometimes treated as diseases. In the
seventeenth century, so far as the north of Europe is concerned,
these displays of "possession" on a great scale had almost
entirely ceased; here and there cases appeared, but there was no
longer the wild rage extending over great districts and
afflicting thousands of people. Yet it was, as we shall see, in
this same seventeenth century, in the last expiring throes of
this superstition, that it led to the worst acts of cruelty.[[140]]

While this Satanic influence had been exerted on so great a
scale throughout northern Europe, a display strangely like it,
yet strangely unlike it, had been going on in Italy. There, too,
epidemics of dancing and jumping seized groups and communities;
but they were attributed to a physical cause--the theory being
that the bite of a tarantula in some way provoked a supernatural
intervention, of which dancing was the accompaniment and cure.

In the middle of the sixteenth century Fracastoro made an
evident impression on the leaders of Italian opinion by using
medical means in the cure of the possessed; though it is worthy
of note that the medicine which he applied successfully was such
as we now know could not by any direct effects of its own
accomplish any cure: whatever effect it exerted was wrought upon
the imagination of the sufferer. This form of "possession," then,
passed out of the supernatural domain, and became known as
"tarantism." Though it continued much longer than the corresponding
manifestations in northern Europe, by the beginning of the eighteenth
century it had nearly disappeared; and, though special manifestations
of it on a small scale still break out occasionally, its main
survival is the "tarantella," which the traveller sees danced
at Naples as a catchpenny assault upon his purse.[[140b]]

But, long before this form of "possession" had begun to
disappear, there had arisen new manifestations, apparently more
inexplicable. As the first great epidemics of dancing and
jumping had their main origin in a religious ceremony, so
various new forms had their principal source in what were
supposed to be centres of religious life--in the convents, and
more especially in those for women.

Out of many examples we may take a few as typical.

In the fifteenth century the chroniclers assure us that, an
inmate of a German nunnery having been seized with a passion for
biting her companions, her mania spread until most, if not all,
of her fellow-nuns began to bite each other; and that this
passion for biting passed from convent to convent into other
parts of Germany, into Holland, and even across the Alps into Italy.

So, too, in a French convent, when a nun began to mew like a
cat, others began mewing; the disease spread, and was only
checked by severe measures.[[141]]

In the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation gave new
force to witchcraft persecutions in Germany, the new Church
endeavouring to show that in zeal and power she exceeded the old.
But in France influential opinion seemed not so favourable to
these forms of diabolical influence, especially after the
publication of Montaigne's _Essays_, in 1580, had spread a
sceptical atmosphere over many leading minds.

In 1588 occurred in France a case which indicates the growth
of this sceptical tendency even in the higher regions of the
french Church, In that year Martha Brossier, a country girl, was,
it was claimed, possessed of the devil. The young woman was to
all appearance under direct Satanic influence. She roamed about,
begging that the demon might be cast out of her, and her
imprecations and blasphemies brought consternation wherever she
went. Myth-making began on a large scale; stories grew and sped.
The Capuchin monks thundered from the pulpit throughout France
regarding these proofs of the power of Satan: the alarm spread,
until at last even jovial, sceptical King Henry IV was
disquieted, and the reigning Pope was asked to take measures to
ward off the evil.

Fortunately, there then sat in the episcopal chair of Angers
a prelate who had apparently imbibed something of Montaigne's
scepticism--Miron; and, when the case was brought before him, he
submitted it to the most time-honoured of sacred tests. He first
brought into the girl's presence two bowls, one containing holy
water, the other ordinary spring water, but allowed her to draw a
false inference regarding the contents of each: the result was
that at the presentation of the holy water the devils were
perfectly calm, but when tried with the ordinary water they threw
Martha into convulsions.

The next experiment made by the shrewd bishop was to similar
purpose. He commanded loudly that a book of exorcisms be brought,
and under a previous arrangement, his attendants brought him a
copy of Virgil. No sooner had the bishop begun to read the first
line of the _AEneid_ than the devils threw Martha into convulsions.
On another occasion a Latin dictionary, which she had reason to
believe was a book of exorcisms, produced a similar effect.

Although the bishop was thereby led to pronounce the whole
matter a mixture of insanity and imposture, the Capuchin monks
denounced this view as godless. They insisted that these tests
really proved the presence of Satan--showing his cunning in
covering up the proofs of his existence. The people at large
sided with their preachers, and Martha was taken to Paris, where
various exorcisms were tried, and the Parisian mob became as
devoted to her as they had been twenty years before to the
murderers of the Huguenots, as they became two centuries later to
Robespierre, and as they more recently were to General Boulanger.

But Bishop Miron was not the only sceptic. The Cardinal de
Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, charged the most eminent physicians
of the city, and among them Riolan, to report upon the case.
Various examinations were made, and the verdict was that Martha
was simply a hysterical impostor. Thanks, then, to medical
science, and to these two enlightened ecclesiastics who summoned
its aid, what fifty or a hundred years earlier would have been
the centre of a widespread epidemic of possession was isolated,
and hindered from producing a national calamity.

In the following year this healthful growth of scepticism
continued. Fourteen persons had been condemned to death for
sorcery, but public opinion was strong enough to secure a new
examination by a special commission, which reported that "the
prisoners stood more in need of medicine than of punishment," and
they were released.[[143]]

But during the seventeenth century, the clergy generally
having exerted themselves heroically to remove this "evil heart
of unbelief" so largely due to Montaigne, a theological reaction
was brought on not only in France but in all parts of the
Christian world, and the belief in diabolic possession, though
certainly dying, flickered up hectic, hot, and malignant through
the whole century. In 1611 we have a typical case at Aix. An
epidemic of possession having occurred there, Gauffridi, a man of
note, was burned at the stake as the cause of the trouble.
Michaelis, one of the priestly exorcists, declared that he had
driven out sixty-five hundred devils from one of the possessed.
Similar epidemics occurred in various parts of the world.[[143b]]

Twenty years later a far more striking case occurred at Loudun,
in western France, where a convent of Ursuline nuns was
"afflicted by demons."

The convent was filled mainly with ladies of noble birth,
who, not having sufficient dower to secure husbands, had,
according to the common method of the time, been made nuns.

It is not difficult to understand that such an imprisonment
of a multitude of women of different ages would produce some
woful effects. Any reader of Manzoni's _Promessi Sposi_, with its
wonderful portrayal of the feelings and doings of a noble lady
kept in a convent against her will, may have some idea of the
rage and despair which must have inspired such assemblages in
which pride, pauperism, and the attempted suppression of the
instincts of humanity wrought a fearful work.

What this work was may be seen throughout the Middle Ages;
but it is especially in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
that we find it frequently taking shape in outbursts of diabolic
possession.[[143c]]

In this case at Loudun, the usual evidences of Satanic
influence appeared. One after another of the inmates fell into
convulsions: some showed physical strength apparently
supernatural; some a keenness of perception quite as surprising;
many howled forth blasphemies and obscenities.

Near the convent dwelt a priest--Urbain Grandier--noted for
his brilliancy as a writer and preacher, but careless in his way
of living. Several of the nuns had evidently conceived a passion
for him, and in their wild rage and despair dwelt upon his name.
In the same city, too, were sundry ecclesiastics and laymen with
whom Grandier had fallen into petty neighbourhood quarrels, and
some of these men held the main control of the convent.

Out of this mixture of "possession" within the convent and
malignity without it came a charge that Grandier had bewitched
the young women.

The Bishop of Poictiers took up the matter. A trial was
held, and it was noted that, whenever Grandier appeared, the
"possessed" screamed, shrieked, and showed every sign of diabolic
influence. Grandier fought desperately, and appealed to the
Archbishop of Bordeaux, De Sourdis. The archbishop ordered a more
careful examination, and, on separating the nuns from each other
and from certain monks who had been bitterly hostile to Grandier,
such glaring discrepancies were found in their testimony that the
whole accusation was brought to naught.

But the enemies of Satan and of Grandier did not rest.
Through their efforts Cardinal Richelieu, who appears to have had
an old grudge against Grandier, sent a representative, Laubardemont,
to make another investigation. Most frightful scenes were now
enacted: the whole convent resounded more loudly than ever with
shrieks, groans, howling, and cursing, until finally Grandier,
though even in the agony of torture he refused to confess the
crimes that his enemies suggested, was hanged and burned.

From this centre the epidemic spread: multitudes of women
and men were affected by it in various convents; several of the
great cities of the south and west of France came under the same
influence; the "possession" went on for several years longer and
then gradually died out, though scattered cases have occurred
from that day to this.[[145]]

A few years later we have an even more striking example
among the French Protestants. The Huguenots, who had taken
refuge in the mountains of the Cevennes to escape persecution,
being pressed more and more by the cruelties of Louis XIV, began
to show signs of a high degree of religious exaltation. Assembled
as they were for worship in wild and desert places, an epidemic
broke out among them, ascribed by them to the Almighty, but by
their opponents to Satan. Men, women, and children preached and
prophesied. Large assemblies were seized with trembling. Some
underwent the most terrible tortures without showing any signs of
suffering. Marshal de Villiers, who was sent against them,
declared that he saw a town in which all the women and girls,
without exception, were possessed of the devil, and ran leaping
and screaming through the streets. Cases like this, inexplicable
to the science of the time, gave renewed strength to the
theological view.[[145b]]

Toward the end of the same century similar manifestations
began to appear on a large scale in America.

The life of the early colonists in New England was such as to
give rapid growth to the germs of the doctrine of possession
brought from the mother country. Surrounded by the dark pine
forests; having as their neighbours indians, who were more than
suspected of being children of Satan; harassed by wild beasts
apparently sent by the powers of evil to torment the elect; with
no varied literature to while away the long winter evenings; with
few amusements save neighbourhood quarrels; dwelling intently on
every text of Scripture which supported their gloomy theology,
and adopting its most literal interpretation, it is not strange
that they rapidly developed ideas regarding the darker side of
nature.[[146]]

This fear of witchcraft received a powerful stimulus from
the treatises of learned men. Such works, coming from Europe,
which was at that time filled with the superstition, acted
powerfully upon conscientious preachers, and were brought by them
to bear upon the people at large. Naturally, then, throughout the
latter half of the seventeenth century we find scattered cases of
diabolic possession. At Boston, Springfield, Hartford, Groton,
and other towns, cases occurred, and here and there we hear of
death-sentences.

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century the fruit of
these ideas began to ripen. In the year 1684 Increase Mather
published his book, _Remarkable Providences_, laying stress upon
diabolic possession and witchcraft. This book, having been sent
over to England, exercised an influence there, and came back with
the approval of no less a man than Richard Baxter: by this its
power at home was increased.

In 1688 a poor family in Boston was afflicted by demons:
four children, the eldest thirteen years of age, began leaping
and barking like dogs or purring like cats, and complaining of
being pricked, pinched, and cut; and, to help the matter, an old
Irishwoman was tried and executed.

All this belief might have passed away like a troubled dream
had it not become incarnate in a strong man. This man was Cotton
Mather, the son of Increase Mather. Deeply religious, possessed
of excellent abilities, a great scholar, anxious to promote the
welfare of his flock in this world and in the next, he was far in
advance of ecclesiastics generally on nearly all the main
questions between science and theology. He came out of his
earlier superstition regarding the divine origin of the Hebrew
punctuation; he opposed the old theologic idea regarding the
taking of interest for money; he favoured inoculation as a
preventive of smallpox when a multitude of clergymen and laymen
opposed it; he accepted the Newtonian astronomy despite the
outcries against its "atheistic tendency"; he took ground
against the time-honoured dogma that comets are "signs and
wonders." He had, indeed, some of the defects of his qualities,
and among them pedantic vanity, pride of opinion, and love of
power; but he was for his time remarkably liberal and
undoubtedly sincere. He had thrown off a large part of his
father's theology, but one part of it he could not throw off: he
was one of the best biblical scholars of his time, and he could
not break away from the fact that the sacred Scriptures
explicitly recognise witchcraft and demoniacal possession as
realities, and enjoin against witchcraft the penalty of death.
Therefore it was that in 1689 he published his _Memorable
Providences relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions_. The book,
according to its title-page, was "recommended by the Ministers of
Boston and Charleston," and its stories soon became the familiar
reading of men, women, and children throughout New England.

Out of all these causes thus brought to bear upon public
opinion began in 1692 a new outbreak of possession, which is one
of the most instructive in history. The Rev. Samuel Parris was the
minister of the church in Salem, and no pope ever had higher ideas
of his own infallibility, no bishop a greater love of ceremony,
no inquisitor a greater passion for prying and spying.[[147]]

Before long Mr. Parris had much upon his hands. Many of his
hardy, independent parishioners disliked his ways. Quarrels
arose. Some of the leading men of the congregation were pitted
against him. The previous minister, George Burroughs, had left
the germs of troubles and quarrels, and to these were now added
new complications arising from the assumptions of Parris. There
were innumerable wranglings and lawsuits; in fact, all the
essential causes for Satanic interference which we saw at work in
and about the monastery at Loudun, and especially the turmoil of
a petty village where there is no intellectual activity, and
where men and women find their chief substitute for it in
squabbles, religious, legal, political, social, and personal.

In the darkened atmosphere thus charged with the germs of
disease it was suddenly discovered that two young girls in the
family of Mr. Parris were possessed of devils: they complained of
being pinched, pricked, and cut, fell into strange spasms and
made strange speeches--showing the signs of diabolic possession
handed down in fireside legends or dwelt upon in popular witch
literature--and especially such as had lately been described by
Cotton Mather in his book on _Memorable Providences_. The two
girls, having been brought by Mr. Parris and others to tell who
had bewitched them, first charged an old Indian woman, and the
poor old Indian husband was led to join in the charge. This at
once afforded new scope for the activity of Mr. Parris.
Magnifying his office, he immediately began making a great stir
in Salem and in the country round about. Two magistrates were
summoned. With them came a crowd, and a court was held at the
meeting-house. The scenes which then took place would have been
the richest of farces had they not led to events so tragical. The
possessed went into spasms at the approach of those charged with
witchcraft, and when the poor old men and women attempted to
attest their innocence they were overwhelmed with outcries by the
possessed, quotations of Scripture by the ministers, and
denunciations by the mob. One especially--Ann Putnam, a child of
twelve years--showed great precocity and played a striking part
in the performances. The mania spread to other children; and two
or three married women also, seeing the great attention paid to
the afflicted, and influenced by that epidemic of morbid
imitation which science now recognises in all such cases, soon
became similarly afflicted, and in their turn made charges
against various persons. The Indian woman was flogged by her
master, Mr. Parris, until she confessed relations with Satan; and
others were forced or deluded into confession. These hysterical
confessions, the results of unbearable torture, or the
reminiscences of dreams, which had been prompted by the witch
legends and sermons of the period, embraced such facts as flying
through the air to witch gatherings, partaking of witch
sacraments, signing a book presented by the devil, and submitting
to Satanic baptism.

The possessed had begun with charging their possession upon
poor and vagrant old women, but ere long, emboldened by their
success, they attacked higher game, struck at some of the
foremost people of the region, and did not cease until several of
these were condemned to death, and every man, woman, and child
brought under a reign of terror. Many fled outright, and one of
the foremost citizens of Salem went constantly armed, and kept
one of his horses saddled in the stable to flee if brought under
accusation.

The hysterical ingenuity of the possessed women grew with
their success. They insisted that they saw devils prompting the
accused to defend themselves in court. Did one of the accused
clasp her hands in despair, the possessed clasped theirs; did the
accused, in appealing to Heaven, make any gesture, the possessed
simultaneously imitated it; did the accused in weariness drop her
head, the possessed dropped theirs, and declared that the witch
was trying to break their necks. The court-room resounded with
groans, shrieks, prayers, and curses; judges, jury, and people
were aghast, and even the accused were sometimes thus led to
believe in their own guilt.

Very striking in all these cases was the alloy of frenzy
with trickery. In most of the madness there was method. Sundry
witches charged by the possessed had been engaged in controversy
with the Salem church people. Others of the accused had
quarrelled with Mr. Parris. Still others had been engaged in old
lawsuits against persons more or less connected with the girls.
One of the most fearful charges, which cost the life of a noble
and lovely woman, arose undoubtedly from her better style of
dress and living. Old slumbering neighbourhood or personal
quarrels bore in this way a strange fruitage of revenge; for the
cardinal doctrine of a fanatic's creed is that his enemies are
the enemies of God.

Any person daring to hint the slightest distrust of the
proceedings was in danger of being immediately brought under
accusation of a league with Satan. Husbands and children were
thus brought to the gallows for daring to disbelieve these
charges against their wives and mothers. Some of the clergy were
accused for endeavouring to save members of their churches.[[150]]

One poor woman was charged with "giving a look toward the
great meeting-house of Salem, and immediately a demon entered the
house and tore down a part of it." This cause for the falling of
a bit of poorly nailed wainscoting seemed perfectly satisfactory
to Dr. Cotton Mather, as well as to the judge and jury, and she
was hanged, protesting her innocence. Still another lady,
belonging to one of the most respected families of the region,
was charged with the crime of witchcraft. The children were