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.[341]



[341] On the general attribution of disease to demoniacal

influence, see Sprenger, History of Medicine, passim (note, for a

later attitude, vol. ii, pp. 150-170, 178); Calmeil, De la Folie,

Paris, 1845, vol. i, pp. 104, 105; Esquirol, Des Maladies

Mentales, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 482; also Tylor, Primitive

Culture. For a very plain and honest statement of this view in

our own sacred books, see Oort, Hooykaas, and Kuenen, The Bible

for Young People, English translation, chap. v, p. 167 and

following; also Farrar's Life of Christ, chap. xvii.  For this

idea in Greece and elsewhere, see Maury, La Magie, etc., vol.

iii, p. 276, giving, among other citations, one from book v of

the Odyssey.  On the influence of Platonism, see Esquirol and

others, as above--the main passage cited is from the Phaedo.  For

the devotion of the early fathers and doctors to this idea, see

citations from Eusebius, Lactantius, St. Jerome, St. Augustine,

St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen, in Tissot,

L'Imagination, p. 369; also Jacob (i.e., Paul Lecroix), Croyances

Populaires, p. 183.  For St. Augustine, see also his De Civitate

Dei, lib. xxii, chap. vii, and his Enarration in Psal., cxxxv, 1.

For the breaking away of the religious orders in Italy from the

entire supremacy of this idea, see Becavin, L'Ecole de Salerne,

Paris, 1888; also Daremberg, Histoire de la Medecine.  Even so

late as the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther maintained

(Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, London, 1872, pp. 250, 256)

that "Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind."





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.[342] 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.



[342] It is significant of this scientific attitude that the

Greek word for superstition means, literally, fear of gods or

demons.





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.[343]



[343] For authorities regarding this development of scientific

truth and mercy in antiquity, see especially Krafft-Ebing,

Lehrbuch des Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888, p. 40 and the pages

following; Trelat, Recherches Historiques sur la Folie, Paris,

1839; Semelaigne, L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquitie, Paris,

1869; Dagron, Des Alienes, Paris, 1875; also Calmeil, De la

Folie, Sprenger, and especially Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin,

Berlin, 1840.





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.[344]



[344] For the exorcism against disease found at Ninevah, see G.

Smith, Delitzsch's German translation, p. 34.  For a very

interesting passage regarding the representaion of a diabolic

personage on a Babylonian bronze, and for a very frank statement

regarding the transmission of ideas regarding Satanic power to

our sacred books, see Sayce, Herodotus, appendix ii, p. 393.  It

is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether Plato himself or his

contemporaries knew anything of evil demons, this conception

probably coming into the Greek world, as into the Latin, with the

Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the

birth of Christ; but to the early Christians, a demon was a

demon, and Plato's, good or bad, were pagan, and therefore

devils.  The Greek word "epilepsy" is itself a survival of the

old belief, fossilized in a word, since its literal meaning

refers to the SEIZURE of the patient by evil spirits.





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."[345]



[345] For a striking statement of the Jewish belief in diabolical

interference, see Josephus, De Bello Judaico, vii, 6, iii; also

his Antiquities, vol. viii, Whiston's translation.  On the "devil

cast out," in Mark ix, 17-29, as undoubtedly a case of epilepsy,

see Cherullier, Essai sur l'Epilepsie; also Maury, art. Demonique

in the Encyclopedie Moderne. In one text, at least, the popular

belief is perfectly shown as confounding madness and possession:

"He hath a devil,and is mad," John x, 20.  Among the multitude of

texts, those most relied upon were Matthew viii, 28, and Luke x,

17; and for the use of fetiches in driving out evil spirits, the

account of the cures wrought by touching the garments of St. Paul

in Acts xix, 12.  On the general subject, see authorities already

given, and as a typical passage, Tertullian, Ad. Scap., ii.  For

the very gross view taken by St. Basil, see Cudworth,

Intellectual System, vol. ii, p. 648; also Archdeacon Farrar's

Life of Christ.  For the case related by St. Gregory the Great

with comical details, see the Exempla of Archbishop Jacques de

Vitrie, edited by Prof. T. F. Crane, of Cornell University, p.

59, art. cxxx.  For a curious presentation of Greek views, see

Lelut, Le demon Socrate, Paris, 1856; and for the transmission of

these to Christianity, see the same, p. 201 and following.





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."[346]



[346] See Cockayne, Leechdoms, Wort-cunning, and Star-Craft of

Early England in the Rolls Series, vol. ii, p. 177; also pp. 355,

356. For the great value of priestly saliva, see W. W. Story's

essays.





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.[347]



[347]  For a very thorough and interesting statement on the

general subject, see Kirchhoff, Beziehungen des Damonen- und

Hexenwesens zur deutschen Irrenpflege in the Allgemeine

Zeitschrift fur Psychiatrie, Berlin, 1888, Bd. xliv, Heft 25.

For Roman Catholic authority, see Addis and Arnold, Catholic

Dictionary, article Energumens.  For a brief and eloquent

summary, see Krefft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, as above;

and for a clear view of the transition from pagan mildness in the

care of the insane to severity and cruelty under the Christian

Church, see Maudsley, The Pathology of the Mind, London, 1879, p.

523.  See also Buchmann, Die undfreie und die freie Kirche,

Bresleau, 1873, p. 251.  For other citations, see Kirchoff, as

above, pp. 334-346.  For Bishop Nemesius, see Trelat, p. 48. For

an account of Agobard's general position in regard to this and

allied superstitions, see Reginald Lane Poole's Illustrations of

the History of Medieval Thought, London, 1884.





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.[348]



[348] See Baas and Werner, cited by Kirchhoff,as above; also

Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 68, and note, New York,

1884.  As to Basil's belief in the corporeality of devils, see

his Commentary on Isaiah, cap. i.





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.[349]



[349] For a very full and learned, if somewhat one-sided, account

of the earlier effects of this stream of charitable thought, see

Tollemer, Des Origines de la Charite Catholique, Paris, 1858.  It

is instructive to note that, while this book is very full in

regard to the action of the Church on slavery and on provision

for the widows and orphans, the sick, infirm, captives, and

lepers, there is hardly a trace of any care for the insane.  This

same want is incidentally shown by a typical example in Kriegk,

Aerzte, Heilanstalten und Geisteskranke im mittelalterlichen

Frankfurt, Frankfurt a. M., 1863, pp. 16, 17; also Kirschhof, pp.

396, 397.  On the general subject, see Semelaigne, as above, p.

214; also Calmeil, vol. i, pp. 116, 117.  For the effect of

Muslem example in Spain and Italy, see Krafft-Ebing, as above, p.

45, note.





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.[350]



[350] Thesaurus Exorcismorum atque Conjurationum terribilium,

potentissimorum, efficacissimorum, cum PRACTICA probatissima:

quibus spiritus maligni, Daemones Maleficiaque omnia de

Corporibus humanis obsessis, tanquam Flagellis Fustibusque

fugantur, expelluntur, . . . Cologne, 1626.  Many of the books of

the exorcists were put upon the various indexes of the Church,

but this, the richest collection of all, and including nearly all

those condemned, was not prohibited until 1709.  Scarcely less

startling manuals continued even later in use; and exorcisms

adapted to every emergency may of course still be found in all

the Benedictionals of the Church, even the latest.  As an

example, see the Manuale Benedictionum, published by the Bishop

of Passau in 1849, or the Exorcismus in Satanam, etc., issued in

1890 by the present Pope, and now on sale at the shop of the

Propoganda in Rome.





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.[351]



[351] See the Conjuratio on p. 300 of the Thesaurus, and the

general directions given on pp. 251, 251.





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.[352]



[352] Thesaurus Exorcismorum, pp. 812-817.





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!"[353]



[353] Ibid., p. 859.





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."[354]



[354] In my previous chapters, especially that on meteorology, I

have quoted extensively from the original treatises, of which a

very large collection is in my posession; but in this chapter I

have mainly availed myself of the copious translations given by

M. H. Dziewicki, in his excellent article in The Nineteenth

Century for October, 1888, entitled Exorcizo Te.  For valuable

citations on the origin and spread of exorcism, see Lecky's

European Morals (third English edition), vol. i, pp. 379-385.





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.[355]



[355] For prescription of the whipping-post by Sir Thomas More,

see D. H. Tuke's History of Insanity in the British Isles,

London, 1882, p. 41.





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.[356]



[356] I cite these instances out of a vast number which I have

personally noted in visits to various cathedrals.  For striking

examples of mediaeval grotesques, see Wright's History of

Caricature and the Grotesque, London, 1875; Langlois's Stalles de

la Cathedrale de Rouen, 1838; Adeline's Les Sculptures Grotesques

et Symboliques, Rouen, 1878; Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire de

l'Architecture; Gailhabaud, Sur l'Architecture, etc.  For a

reproduction of an illuminated manuscript in which devils fly out

of the mouths of the possessed under the influence of exorcisms,

see Cahier and Martin, Nouveaux Melanges d' Archeologie for 1874,

p. 136; and for a demon emerging from a victim's mouth in a puff

of smoke at the command of St. Francis Xavier, see La Devotion de

Dix Vendredis, etc., Plate xxxii.





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.[357]



[357] See Wright, History of Caricature and the Grotesque; F. J.

Mone, Schauspiele des Mittelalters, Carlsruhe, 1846; Dr. Karl

Hase, Miracle-Plays and Sacred Dramas, Boston,1880 (translation

from the German).  Examples of the miracle-plays may be found in

Marriott's Collection of English Miracle-Plays, 1838; in Hone's

Ancient Mysteries; in T. Sharpe's Dissertaion on the Pageants . .

. anciently performed at Coventry, Coventry, 1828; in the

publications of the Shakespearean and other societies.  See

especially The Harrowing of Hell, a miracle-play, edited from the

original now in the British Museum, by T. O. Halliwell, London,

1840.  One of the items still preserved is a sum of money paid

for keeping a fire burning in hell's mouth.  Says Hase (as above,

p. 42): "In wonderful satyrlike masquerade, in which neither

horns, tails, nor hoofs were ever . . . wanting, the devil

prosecuted on the stage his business of fetching souls," which

left the mouths of the dying "in the form of small images."





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![358]



[358] I shall discuss these epidemics of possession, which form a

somewhat distinct class of phenomena, in the next chapter.





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.[359]



[359] The typical picture representing a priest's struggle with

the devil is in the city gallery of Rouen.  The modern picture is

Robert Fleury's painting in the Luxembourg Gallery at Paris.





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.[360]



[360] See Geraldus Cambrensis, cited by Tuke, as above, pp. 8, 9.





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.[361]



[361] See Menabrea, Proces au Moyen Age contre les Animaux,

Chambery, 1846, pp. 31 and following; also Desmazes, Supplices,

Prisons et Grace en France, pp. 89, 90, and 385-395.  For a

formula and ceremonies used in excommunicating insects, see

Rydberg, pp. 75 and following.





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.[362]



[362] For Luther, see, among the vast number of similar passages

in his works, the Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, pp. 251,

252.  As to the grotesques in mediaeval churches, the writer of

this article, in visiting the town church of Wittenberg, noticed,

just opposite the pulpit where Luther so often preached, a very

spirited figure of an imp peering out upon the congregation.  One

can but suspect that this mediaeval survival frequently suggested

Luther's favourite topic during his sermons.  For Beza, see his

Notes on the New Testament, Matthew iv, 24.





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.[363]



[363] For instances of this competition, see Freytag, Aus dem

Jahrh. d. Reformation, pp. 359-375.  The Jesuit Stengel, in his

De judiciis divinis (Ingolstadt, 1651), devotes a whole chapter

to an exorcism, by the great Canisius, of a spirit that had

baffled Protestant conjuration.  Among the most jubilant Catholic

satires of the time are those exulting in Luther's alleged

failure as an exorcist.





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.[364]] 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.[365] 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.



[364] For the attitude of the Catholic clergy, the best sources

are the confidential Jesuit Litterae Annuae.  To this day the

numerous treatises on "pastoral medicine" in use in the older

Church devote themselves mainly to this sort of warfare with the

devil.



[365] Baptismal exorcism continued in use among the Lutherans

till the eighteenth century, though the struggle over its

abandonment had been long and sharp.  See Krafft, Histories vom

Exorcismo, Hamburg, 1750.





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.[366]



[366] The Jesuit Stengel, professor at Ingolstadt, who (in his

great work, De judiciis divinis) urges, as reasons why a merciful

God permits illness, his wish to glorify himself through the

miracles wrought by his Church, and his desire to test the faith

of men by letting them choose between the holy aid of the Church

and the illicit resort to medicine, declares that there is a

difference between simple possession and that brought by

bewitchment, and insists that the latter is the more difficult to

treat.





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.[367]

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.[368]  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."[369]



[367] See D. H. Tuke, Chapters in the History of the Insane in

the British Isles, London, 1822, p. 36; also Kirchhoff, p. 340.

The forms of insanity especially mentioned are "dementia senilis"

and epilepsy.  A striking case of voluntary confession of

witchcraft by a woman who lived to recover from the delusion is

narrated in great detail by Reginald Scot, in his Discovery of

Witchcraft, London, 1584.  It is, alas, only too likely that the

"strangeness" caused by slight and unrecognised mania led often

to the accusation of witchcraft instead of to the suspicion of

possession.



[368] See Kirchhoff, as above.



[369] For the arguments used by creatures of this sort, see

Diefenbach, Der Hexenwahn vor und nach der Glaubensspaltung in

Deutschland, pp. 342-346.  A long list of their infamous names is

given on p. 345.





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.[370]



[370] As to the frequency among the insane of this form of

belief, see Calmeil, vol. ii, p. 257; also Maudsley, Pathology of

Mind, pp. 201, 202, and 418-424; also Rambaud, Histoire de la

Civilisation en France, vol. ii, p. 110.  For the peculiar

abberations of the saints above named and other ecstatics, see

Maudsley, as above, pp. 71, 72, and 149, 150.  Maudsley's

chapters on this and cognate subjects are certainly among the

most valuable contributions to modern thought.  For a discussion

of the most recent case, see Warlomont, Louise Lateau, Paris,

1875.





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.[371]



[371] As to the devil's entering into the mouth while eating, see

Calmeil, as above, vol. ii, pp. 105, 106.  As to the dread of Dr.

Borde lest the evil spirit, when exorcised, might enter his own

body, see Tuke, as above, p. 28.  As to the King of Spain, see

the noted chapter in Buckle's History of Civilization in England.





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.[372]



[372] Among the multitude of authorities on this point, see

Kirchhoff, as above, p. 337; and for a most striking picture of

this dark side of convent life, drawn, indeed, by a devoted Roman

Catholic, see Manzoni's Promessi Sposi.  On Anna Renata there is

a striking essay by the late Johannes Scherr, in his

Hammerschlage und Historien.  On the general subject of hysteria

thus developed, see the writings of Carpenter and Tuke; and as to

its natural development in nunneries, see Maudsley,

Responsibility in Mental Disease, p. 9.  Especial attention will

be paid to this in the chapter on Diabolism and Hysteria.





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.[373]



[373] This branch of the subject will be discussed more at length

in a future chapter.





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.[374]



[374] See Esquirol, Des Maladies mentales, vol. i, pp. 488, 489;

vol. ii, p. 529.





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."[375]



[375] See the two sermons, Sur les Demons (which are virtually

but two versions of the same sermon), in Bousset's works, edition

of 1845, vol. iii, p. 236 et seq.; also Dziewicki, in The

Nineteenth Century, as above.  On Bousset's resistance to other

scientific truths, especially in astronomy, geology, and

political economy, see other chapters in this work.









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.[376]



[376] For Colbert's influence, see Dagron, p. 8; also Rambaud, as

above, vol. ii, p. 155.  For St. Andre, see Lacroix, as above,

pp. 189, 190.  For Charcot's researches into the disease now

known as Meteorismus hystericus, but which was formerly regarded

in the ecclesiastical courts as an evidence of pregnancy through

relations with Satan, see Snell, Hexenprocesse un Geistesstorung,

Munchen, 1891, chaps. xii and xiii.





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.[377]



[377] For John Locke, see King's Life of Locke, pp. 326, 327.

For Wesley, out of his almost innumerable writings bearing on the

subject, I may select the sermon on Evil Angels, and his Letter

to Dr. Middleton; and in his collected works, there are many

striking statements and arguments, especially in vols. iii, vi,

and ix.  See also Tyerman's Life of Wesley, vol. ii, pp. 260 et

seq. Luther's great hymn, Ein' feste Burg, remained, of course, a

prominent exception to the rule; but a popular proverb came to

express the general feeling: "Auf Teufel reimt sich Zweifel."

See Langin, as above, pp. 545, 546.





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.[378]



[378] See Kirchhoff, pp. 181-187; also Langin, Religion und

Hexenprozess, as above cited.





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.[379]



[379] For remarkably interesting articles showing the recent

efforts of sundry priests in Italy and South Germany to revive

the belief in diabolic possession--efforts in which the Bishop of

Augsburg took part--see Prof. E. P. Evans, on Modern Instances of

Diabolic Possession, and on Recent Recrudescence of Superstition

in The Popular Science Monthly for Dec. 1892, and for Oct., Nov.,

1895.



Speaking of the part played by Satan at Ober-Ammergau, Hase says:

"Formerly, seated on his infernal throne, surrounded by his hosts

with Sin and Death, he opened the play, . . . and . . . retained

throughout a considerable part; but he has been surrendered to

the progress of that enlightenment which even the Bavarian

highlands have not been able to escape" (p. 80).



The especial point to be noted is, that from the miracle-play of

the present day Satan and his works have disappeared.  The

present writer was unable to detect, in a representation of the

Passion Play at Ober-Ammergau, in 1881, the slightest reference

to diabolic interference with the course of events as represented

from the Old Testament, or from the New, in a series of tableaux

lasting, with a slight intermission, from nine in the morning to

after four in the afternoon.  With the most thorough exhibition

of minute events in the life of Christ, and at times with

hundreds of figures on the stage, there was not a person or a

word which recalled that main feature in the mediaeval Church

plays.  The present writer also made a full collection of the

photographs of tableaux, of engravings of music, and of works

bearing upon these representations for twenty years before, and

in none of these was there an apparent survival of the old

belief.





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.[380]



[380] On Sir Thomas More and the condition of Bedlam, see Tuke,

History of the Insane in the British Isles, pp. 63-73.  One of

the passages of Shakespeare is in As You Like It, Act iii, scene

2.  As to the survival of indifference to the sufferings of the

insane so long after the belief which caused it had generally

disappeared, see some excellent remarks in Maudsley's

Responsibility in Mental Disease, London, 1885, pp. 10-12.



The older English practice is thus quaintly described by Richard

Carew (in his Survey of Cornwall, London, 1602, 1769): "In our

forefathers' daies, when devotion as much exceeded knowledge, as

knowledge now commeth short of devotion, there were many

bowssening places, for curing of mad men, and amongst the rest,

one at Alternunne in this Hundred, called S. Nunnespoole, which

Saints Altar (it may be) . . . gave name to the church. . . The

watter running from S. Nunnes well, fell into a square and close

walled plot, which might bee filled at what depth they listed.

Vpon this wall was the franticke person set to stand, his backe

towards the poole, and from thence with a sudden blow in the

brest, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellowe,

provided for the nonce, tooke him, and tossed him vp and downe,

alongst and athwart the water, vntill the patient, by forgoing

strength, had somewhat forgot his fury.  Then there was hee

conveyed to the Church, and certain Masses sung over him; vpon

which handling, if his right wits returned, S. Nunne had the

thanks; but if there appeared any small amendment, he was

bowsened againe, and againe, while there remayned in him any hope

of life, for recovery."





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.[381]



[381] For the services of Tenon and his associates, and also for

the work of Pinel, see especially Esquirol, Des Maladies

mentales, Paris, 1838, vol. i, p. 35; and for the general

subject, and the condition of the hospitals at this period, see

Dagron, as above.





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.[382]



[382] See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. 110; also Trelat, as already

cited.





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."[383]



[383] See D. H. Tuke, as above, p. 116-142, and 512; also the

Edinburgh Review for April, 1803.





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.