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."[384]



[384] As to eminent physicians' finding a stumbling-block in

hysterical mania, see Kirchhoff's article, p. 351, cited in

previous chapter.





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.[385]



[385] As to the Maenads, Corybantes, and the disease

"Corybantism," see, for accessible and adequate statements,

Smith's Dictionary of Antiquities and Lewis and Short's Lexicon;

also reference in Hecker's Essays upon the Black Death and the

Dancing Mania.  For more complete discussion, see Semelaigne,

L'Alienation mentale dans l'Antiquite, Paris, 1869.





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.[386]



[386] See Wellhausen, article Israel, in the Encyclopaedia

Britannica, ninth edition; also the reprint of it in his History

of Israel, London, 1885, p. 546.  On the general subject of the

demoniacal epidemics, see Isensee, Geschichte der Medicin, vol.

i, pp. 260 et seq.; also Hecker's essay.  As to the history of

Saul, as a curious landmark in the general development of the

subject, see The Case of Saul, showing that his Disorder was a

Real Spiritual Possession, by Granville Sharp, London, 1807,

passim.  As to the citation of Saul's case by the reigning Pope

to spur on the French kings against the Huguenots, I hope to give

a list of authorities in a future chapter on The Church and

International Law.  For the general subject, with interesting

details, see Laurent, Etudes sur l'Histoire de l'Humanities.  See

also Maury, La Magie et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquite et au

Moyen Age.





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.[387]



[387] For Paracelsus, see Isensee, vol. i, chap. xi; also

Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with the History and Practice

of Medicine and Surgery, London, 1844, introductory chapter.  For

Wier, see authorities given in my previous chapter.





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.[388]



[388] As to this diminution of widespread epidemic at the end of

the sixteenth century, see citations from Schenck von Grafenberg

in Hecker, as above; also Horst.





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.[389]



[389] See Hecker's Epidemics of the Middle Ages, pp. 87-104; also

extracts and observations in Carpenter's Mental Physiology,

London, 1888, pp. 321-315; also Maudsley, Pathology of Mind, pp.

73 and following.





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.[390]



[390] See citation from Zimmermann's Solitude, in Carpenter, pp.

34, 314.





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.[391]



[391] For the Brossier case, see Clameil, La Folie, tome i, livre

3, c. 2.  For the cases at Tours, see Madden, Phantasmata, vol.

i, pp. 309, 310.





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.[392]



[392] See Dagron, chap. ii.





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 woeful

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.[393]



[393] On monasteries as centres of "possession" and hysterical

epidemics, see Figuier, Le Merveilleux, p. 40 and following; also

Calmeil, Langin, Kirchhoff, Maudsley, and others.  On similar

results from excitement at Protestant meetings in Scotland and

camp meetings in England and America, see Hecker's Essay,

concluding chapters.





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.[394]



[394] Among the many statements of Grandier's case,one of the

best in English may be found in Trollope's Sketches from French

History, London, 1878. See also Bazin, Louis XIII.





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.[395]



[395] See Bersot, Mesmer et la Magnetisme animal, third edition,

Paris, 1864, pp. 95 et seq.





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.[396]



[396] For the idea that America before the Pilgims had been

especially given over to Satan, see the literature of the early

Puritan period, and especially the poetry of Wigglesworth,

treated in Tylor's History of American Literature, vol. ii, p. 25

et seq.





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.[397]



[397] For curious examples of this, see Upham's History of Salem

Witchcraft, vol. i.





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.[398]



[398] This is admirably brought out by Upham, and the lawyerlike

thoroughness with which he has examined all these hidden springs

of the charges is one of the main things which render his book

one of the most valuable contributions to the history and

philosophy of demoniacal possession ever written.





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 fearfully

afflicted whenever she appeared near them.  It seemed never to

occur to any one that a bitter old feud between the Rev. Mr.

Parris and the family of the accused might have prejudiced the

children and directed their attention toward the woman.  No

account was made of the fact that her life had been entirely

blameless; and yet, in view of the wretched insufficiency of

proof, the jury brought in a verdict of not guilty.  As they

brought in this verdict, all the children began to shriek and

scream, until the court committed the monstrous wrong of causing

her to be indicted anew.  In order to warrant this, the judge

referred to one perfectly natural and harmless expression made by

the woman when under examination.  The jury at last brought her

in guilty.  She was condemned; and, having been brought into the

church heavily ironed, was solemnly excommunicated and delivered

over to Satan by the minister.  Some good sense still prevailed,

and the Governor reprieved her; but ecclesiastical pressure and

popular clamour were too powerful.  The Governor was induced to

recall his reprieve, and she was executed, protesting her

innocence and praying for her enemies.[399]



[399] See Drake, The Witchcraft Delusion in New England, vol.

iii, pp. 34 et seq.





Another typical case was presented.  The Rev. Mr. Burroughs,

against whom considerable ill will had been expressed, and whose

petty parish quarrel with the powerful Putnam family had led to

his dismissal from his ministry, was named by the possessed as

one of those who plagued them, one of the most influential among

the afflicted being Ann Putnam.  Mr. Burroughs had led a

blameless life, the main thing charged against him by the Putnams

being that he insisted strenuously that his wife should not go

about the parish talking of her own family matters.  He was

charged with afflicting the children, convicted, and executed.

At the last moment he repeated the Lord's Prayer solemnly and

fully, which it was supposed that no sorcerer could do, and this,

together with his straightforward Christian utterances at the

execution, shook the faith of many in the reality of diabolic

possession.  Ere long it was known that one of the girls had

acknowledged that she had belied some persons who had been

executed, and especially Mr. Burroughs, and that she had begged

forgiveness; but this for a time availed nothing.  Persons who

would not confess were tied up and put to a sort of torture which

was effective in securing new revelations.



In the case of Giles Corey the horrors of the persecution

culminated.  Seeing that his doom was certain, and wishing to

preserve his family from attainder and their property from

confiscation, he refused to plead.  Though eighty years of age,

he was therefore pressed to death, and when, in his last agonies,

his tongue was pressed out of his mouth, the sheriff with his

walking-stick thrust it back again.



Everything was made to contribute to the orthodox view of

possession.  On one occasion, when a cart conveying eight

condemned persons to the place of execution stuck fast in the

mire, some of the possessed declared that they saw the devil

trying to prevent the punishment of his associates.  Confessions

of witchcraft abounded; but the way in which these confessions

were obtained is touchingly exhibited in a statement afterward

made by several women.  In explaining the reasons why, when

charged with afflicting sick persons, they made a false

confession, they said:



"...By reason of that suddain surprizal, we knowing ourselves

altogether Innocent of that Crime, we were all exceedingly

astonished and amazed, and consternated and affrighted even out

of our Reason; and our nearest and dearest Relations, seeing us

in that dreadful condition, and knowing our great danger,

apprehending that there was no other way to save our lives,...

out of tender...pitty perswaded us to confess what we did

confess.  And indeed that Confession, that it is said we made,

was no other than what was suggested to us by some Gentlemen;

they telling us, that we were Witches, and they knew it, and we

knew it, and they knew that we knew it, which made us think that

it was so; and our understanding, our reason, and our faculties

almost gone, we were not capable of judging our condition; as

also the hard measures they used with us, rendred us uncapable of

making our Defence, but said anything and everything which they

desired, and most of what we said, was in effect a consenting to

what they said...."[400]



[400] See Calef, in Drake, vol.ii; also Upham.





Case after case, in which hysteria, fanaticism, cruelty,

injustice, and trickery played their part, was followed up to the

scaffold.  In a short time twenty persons had been put to a

cruel death, and the number of the accused grew larger and

larger.   The highest position and the noblest character formed

no barrier. Daily the possessed became more bold, more tricky,

and more wild. No plea availed anything.  In behalf of several

women, whose lives had been of the purest and gentlest, petitions

were presented, but to no effect.  A scriptural text was always

ready to aid in the repression of mercy:  it was remembered that

"Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light," and above

all resounded the Old Testament injunction, which had sent such

multitudes in Europe to the torture-chamber and the stake, "Thou

shalt not suffer a witch to live."



Such clergymen as Noyes, Parris, and Mather, aided by such judges

as Stoughton and Hathorn, left nothing undone to stimulate these

proceedings.  The great Cotton Mather based upon this outbreak

of disease thus treated his famous book, Wonders of the Invisible

World, thanking God for the triumphs over Satan thus gained at

Salem; and his book received the approbation of the Governor of

the Province, the President of Harvard College, and various

eminent theologians in Europe as well as in America.



But, despite such efforts as these, observation, and thought upon

observation, which form the beginning of all true science,

brought in a new order of things.  The people began to fall

away. Justice Bradstreet, having committed thirty or forty

persons, became aroused to the absurdity of the whole matter; the

minister of Andover had the good sense to resist the theological

view; even so high a personage as Lady Phips, the wife of the

Governor, began to show lenity.



Each of these was, in consequence of this disbelief, charged with

collusion with Satan; but such charges seemed now to lose their

force.



In the midst of all this delusion and terrorism stood Cotton

Mather firm as ever.  His efforts to uphold the declining

superstition were heroic.  But he at last went one step too far.

Being himself possessed of a mania for myth-making and

wonder-mongering, and having described a case of witchcraft with

possibly greater exaggeration than usual, he was confronted by

Robert Calef.  Calef was a Boston merchant, who appears to have

united the good sense of a man of business to considerable

shrewdness in observation, power in thought, and love for truth;

and he began writing to Mather and others, to show the weak

points in the system.  Mather, indignant that a person so much

his inferior dared dissent from his opinion, at first affected to

despise Calef; but, as Calef pressed him more and more closely,

Mather denounced him, calling him among other things "A Coal from

Hell."  All to no purpose:  Calef fastened still more firmly upon

the flanks of the great theologian.  Thought and reason now

began to resume their sway.



The possessed having accused certain men held in very high

respect, doubts began to dawn upon the community at large.  Here

was the repetition of that which had set men thinking in the

German bishoprics when those under trial for witchcraft there had

at last, in their desperation or madness, charged the very

bishops and the judges upon the bench with sorcery.  The party

of reason grew stronger.  The Rev. Mr. Parris was soon put upon

the defensive:  for some of the possessed began to confess that

they had accused people wrongfully.  Herculean efforts were made

by certain of the clergy and devout laity to support the

declining belief, but the more thoughtful turned more and more

against it; jurymen prominent in convictions solemnly retracted

their verdicts and publicly craved pardon of God and man.  Most

striking of all was the case of Justice Sewall.  A man of the

highest character, he had in view of authority deduced from

Scripture and the principles laid down by the great English

judges, unhesitatingly condemned the accused; but reason now

dawned upon him.  He looked back and saw the baselessness of the

whole proceedings, and made a public statement of his errors.

His diary contains many passages showing deep contrition, and

ever afterward, to the end of his life, he was wont, on one day

in the year, to enter into solitude, and there remain all the day

long in fasting, prayer, and penitence.



Chief-Justice Stoughton never yielded.  To the last he lamented

the "evil spirit of unbelief" which was thwarting the glorious

work of freeing New England from demons.



The church of Salem solemnly revoked the excommunications of the

condemned and drove Mr. Parris from the pastorate.  Cotton

Mather passed his last years in groaning over the decline of the

faith and the ingratitude of a people for whom he had done so

much. Very significant is one of his complaints, since it shows

the evolution of a more scientific mode of thought abroad as well

as at home:  he laments in his diary that English publishers

gladly printed Calef's book, but would no longer publish his own,

and he declares this "an attack upon the glory of the Lord."



About forty years after the New England epidemic of "possession"

occurred another typical series of phenomena in France.  In 1727

there died at the French capital a simple and kindly

ecclesiastic, the Archdeacon Paris.  He had lived a pious,

Christian life, and was endeared to multitudes by his charity;

unfortunately, he had espoused the doctrine of Jansen on grace

and free will, and, though he remained in the Gallican Church, he

and those who thought like him were opposed by the Jesuits, and

finally condemned by a papal bull.



His remains having been buried in the cemetery of St. Medard,

the Jansenists flocked to say their prayers at his grave, and

soon miracles began to be wrought there.  Ere long they were

multiplied.  The sick being brought and laid upon the tombstone,

many were cured.  Wonderful stories were attested by

eye-witnesses.  The myth-making tendency--the passion for

developing, enlarging, and spreading tales of wonder--came into

full play and was given free course.



Many thoughtful men satisfied themselves of the truth of these

representations.  One of the foremost English scholars came

over, examined into them, and declared that there could be no

doubt as to the reality of the cures.



This state of things continued for about four years, when, in

1731, more violent effects showed themselves.  Sundry persons

approaching the tomb were thrown into convulsions, hysterics, and

catalepsy; these diseases spread, became epidemic, and soon

multitudes were similarly afflicted.  Both religious parties

made the most of these cases.  In vain did such great authorities

in medical science as Hecquet and Lorry attribute the whole to

natural causes:  the theologians on both sides declared them

supernatural--the Jansenists attributing them to God, the Jesuits

to Satan.



Of late years such cases have been treated in France with much

shrewdness.  When, about the middle of the present century, the

Arab priests in Algiers tried to arouse fanaticism against the

French Christians by performing miracles, the French Government,

instead of persecuting the priests, sent Robert-Houdin, the most

renowned juggler of his time, to the scene of action, and for

every Arab miracle Houdin performed two:  did an Arab marabout

turn a rod into a serpent, Houdin turned his rod into two

serpents; and afterward showed the people how he did it.



So, too, at the last International Exposition, the French

Government, observing the evil effects produced by the mania for

table turning and tipping, took occasion, when a great number of

French schoolmasters and teachers were visiting the exposition,

to have public lectures given in which all the business of dark

closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting the

faces of the departed, and ghostly portraiture was fully

performed by professional mountebanks, and afterward as fully

explained.



So in this case.  The Government simply ordered the gate of the

cemetery to be locked, and when the crowd could no longer

approach the tomb the miracles ceased.  A little Parisian

ridicule helped to end the matter.  A wag wrote up over the gate

of the cemetery.





"De par le Roi, defense a Dieu

  De faire des miracles dans ce lieu"--





which, being translated from doggerel French into doggerel

English, is--



"By order of the king, the Lord must forbear

  To work any more of his miracles here."





But the theological spirit remained powerful.  The French

Revolution had not then intervened to bring it under healthy

limits.  The agitation was maintained, and, though the miracles

and cases of possession were stopped in the cemetery, it spread.

Again full course was given to myth-making and the retailing of

wonders.  It was said that men had allowed themselves to be

roasted before slow fires, and had been afterward found

uninjured; that some had enormous weights piled upon them, but

had supernatural powers of resistance given them; and that, in

one case, a voluntary crucifixion had taken place.



This agitation was long, troublesome, and no doubt robbed many

temporarily or permanently of such little brains as they

possessed.  It was only when the violence had become an old

story and the charm of novelty had entirely worn off, and the

afflicted found themselves no longer regarded with especial

interest, that the epidemic died away.[401]



[401] See Madden, Phantasmata, chap. xiv; also Sir James Stephen,

History of France, lecture xxvi; also Henry Martin, Histoire de

France, vol. xv, pp. 168 et seq.; also Calmeil, liv. v, chap.

xxiv; also Hecker's essay; and, for samples of myth-making, see

the apocryphal Souvenirs de Crequy.





But in Germany at that time the outcome of this belief was far

more cruel.  In 1749 Maria Renata Singer, sub-prioress of a

convent at Wurzburg, was charged with bewitching her fellow-nuns.

There was the usual story--the same essential facts as at

Loudun--women shut up against their will, dreams of Satan

disguised as a young man, petty jealousies, spites, quarrels,

mysterious uproar, trickery, utensils thrown about in a way not

to be accounted for, hysterical shrieking and convulsions, and,

finally, the torture, confession, and execution of the supposed

culprit.[402]



[402] See Soldan, Scherr, Diefenbach, and others.





Various epidemics of this sort broke out from time to time in

other parts of the world, though happily, as modern scepticism

prevailed, with less cruel results.



In 1760 some congregations of Calvinistic Methodists in Wales

became so fervent that they began leaping for joy.  The mania

spread, and gave rise to a sect called the "Jumpers."  A similar

outbreak took place afterward in England, and has been repeated

at various times and places since in our own country.[403]



[403] See Adam's Dictionary of All Religions, article on Jumpers;

also Hecker.





In 1780 came another outbreak in France; but this time it was

not the Jansenists who were affected, but the strictly orthodox.

A large number of young girls between twelve and nineteen years

of age, having been brought together at the church of St. Roch,

in Paris, with preaching and ceremonies calculated to arouse

hysterics, one of them fell into convulsions.  Immediately other

children were similarly taken, until some fifty or sixty were

engaged in the same antics.  This mania spread to other churches

and gatherings, proved very troublesome, and in some cases led to

results especially painful.



About the same period came a similar outbreak among the

Protestants of the Shetland Isles.  A woman having been seized

with convulsions at church, the disease spread to others, mainly

women, who fell into the usual contortions and wild shriekings.

A very effective cure proved to be a threat to plunge the

diseased into a neighbouring pond.







II.  BEGINNINGS OF HELPFUL SCEPTICISM.





But near the end of the eighteenth century a fact very important

for science was established.  It was found that these

manifestations do not arise in all cases from supernatural

sources.  In 1787 came the noted case at Hodden Bridge, in

Lancashire.  A girl working in a cotton manufactory there put a

mouse into the bosom of another girl who had a great dread of

mice.  The girl thus treated immediately went into convulsions,

which lasted twenty-four hours.  Shortly afterward three other

girls were seized with like convulsions, a little later six more,

and then others, until, in all, twenty-four were attacked.  Then

came a fact throwing a flood of light upon earlier occurrences.

This epidemic, being noised abroad, soon spread to another

factory five miles distant.  The patients there suffered from

strangulation, danced, tore their hair, and dashed their heads

against the walls.  There was a strong belief that it was a

disease introduced in cotton, but a resident physician amused the

patients with electric shocks, and the disease died out.



In 1801 came a case of like import in the Charite Hospital in

Berlin.  A girl fell into strong convulsions.  The disease

proved contagious, several others becoming afflicted in a similar

way; but nearly all were finally cured, principally by the

administration of opium, which appears at that time to have been

a fashionable remedy.



Of the same sort was a case at Lyons in 1851.  Sixty women were

working together in a shop, when one of them, after a bitter

quarrel with her husband, fell into a violent nervous paroxysm.

The other women, sympathizing with her, gathered about to assist

her, but one after another fell into a similar condition, until

twenty were thus prostrated, and a more general spread of the

epidemic was only prevented by clearing the premises.[404]



[404] For these examples and others, see Tuke, Influence of the

Mind upon the Body, vol. i, pp. 100, 277; also Hecker's essay.





But while these cases seemed, in the eye of Science, fatal to the

old conception of diabolic influence, the great majority of such

epidemics, when unexplained, continued to give strength to the

older view.



In Roman Catholic countries these manifestations, as we have

seen, have generally appeared in convents, or in churches where

young girls are brought together for their first communion, or at

shrines where miracles are supposed to be wrought.



In Protestant countries they appear in times of great religious

excitement, and especially when large bodies of young women are

submitted to the influence of noisy and frothy preachers.

Well-known examples of this in America are seen in the "Jumpers,"

"Jerkers," and various revival extravagances, especially among

the negroes and "poor whites" of the Southern States.



The proper conditions being given for the development of the

disease--generally a congregation composed mainly of young

women--any fanatic or overzealous priest or preacher may

stimulate hysterical seizures, which are very likely to become

epidemic.



As a recent typical example on a large scale, I take the case of

diabolic possession at Morzine, a French village on the borders

of Switzerland; and it is especially instructive, because it was

thoroughly investigated by a competent man of science.



About the year 1853 a sick girl at Morzine, acting strangely, was

thought to be possessed of the devil, and was taken to Besancon,

where she seems to have fallen into the hands of kindly and

sensible ecclesiastics, and, under the operation of the relics

preserved in the cathedral there--especially the handkerchief of

Christ--the devil was cast out and she was cured.  Naturally,

much was said of the affair among the peasantry, and soon other

cases began to show themselves.  The priest at Morzine attempted

to quiet the matter by avowing his disbelief in such cases of

possession; but immediately a great outcry was raised against

him, especially by the possessed themselves.  The matter was now

widely discussed, and the malady spread rapidly; myth-making and

wonder-mongering began; amazing accounts were thus developed and

sent out to the world.  The afflicted were said to have climbed

trees like squirrels; to have shown superhuman strength; to

have exercised the gift of tongues, speaking in German, Latin,

and even in Arabic; to have given accounts of historical events

they had never heard of; and to have revealed the secret thoughts

of persons about them.  Mingled with such exhibitions of power

were outbursts of blasphemy and obscenity.



But suddenly came something more miraculous, apparently, than all

these wonders.  Without any assigned cause, this epidemic of

possession diminished and the devil disappeared.



Not long after this, Prof. Tissot, an eminent member of the

medical faculty at Dijon, visited the spot and began a series of

researches, of which he afterward published a full account.  He

tells us that he found some reasons for the sudden departure of

Satan which had never been published.  He discovered that the

Government had quietly removed one or two very zealous

ecclesiastics to another parish, had sent the police to Morzine

to maintain order, and had given instructions that those who

acted outrageously should be simply treated as lunatics and sent

to asylums.  This policy, so accordant with French methods of

administration, cast out the devil:  the possessed were mainly

cured, and the matter appeared ended.



But Dr. Tissot found a few of the diseased still remaining, and

he soon satisfied himself by various investigations and

experiments that they were simply suffering from hysteria.  One

of his investigations is especially curious.  In order to observe

the patients more carefully, he invited some of them to dine with

him, gave them without their knowledge holy water in their wine

or their food, and found that it produced no effect whatever,

though its results upon the demons when the possessed knew of its

presence had been very marked.  Even after large draughts of

holy water had been thus given, the possessed remained afflicted,

urged that the devil should be cast out, and some of them even

went into convulsions; the devil apparently speaking from their

mouths.  It was evident that Satan had not the remotest idea

that he had been thoroughly dosed with the most effective

medicine known to the older theology.[405]



[405] For an amazing delineation of the curative and other

virtues of holy water, see the Abbe Gaume, L'Eau benite au XIXme

Siecle, Paris, 1866.





At last Tissot published the results of his experiments, and the

stereotyped answer was soon made.  It resembled the answer made

by the clerical opponents of Galileo when he showed them the

moons of Jupiter through his telescope, and they declared that

the moons were created by the telescope.  The clerical opponents

of Tissot insisted that the non-effect of the holy water upon the

demons proved nothing save the extraordinary cunning of Satan;

that the archfiend wished it to be thought that he does not

exist, and so overcame his repugnance to holy water, gulping it

down in order to conceal his presence.



Dr. Tissot also examined into the gift of tongues exercised by

the possessed.  As to German and Latin, no great difficulty was

presented:  it was by no means hard to suppose that some of the

girls might have learned some words of the former language in the

neighbouring Swiss cantons where German was spoken, or even in

Germany itself; and as to Latin, considering that they had heard

it from their childhood in the church, there seemed nothing very

wonderful in their uttering some words in that language also.

As to Arabic, had they really spoken it, that might have been

accounted for by the relations of the possessed with Zouaves or

Spahis from the French army; but, as Tissot could discover no

such relations, he investigated this point as the most puzzling

of all.



On a close inquiry, he found that all the wonderful examples of

speaking Arabic were reduced to one.  He then asked whether

there was any other person speaking or knowing Arabic in the

town. He was answered that there was not.  He asked whether any

person had lived there, so far as any one could remember, who had

spoken or understood Arabic, and he was answered in the negative.



He then asked the witnesses how they knew that the language

spoken by the girl was Arabic:  no answer was vouchsafed him; but

he was overwhelmed with such stories as that of a pig which, at

sight of the cross on the village church, suddenly refused to go

farther; and he was denounced thoroughly in the clerical

newspapers for declining to accept such evidence.



At Tissot's visit in 1863 the possession had generally ceased,

and the cases left were few and quiet.  But his visits stirred a

new controversy, and its echoes were long and loud in the pulpits

and clerical journals.  Believers insisted that Satan had been

removed by the intercession of the Blessed Virgin; unbelievers

hinted that the main cause of the deliverance was the reluctance

of the possessed to be shut up in asylums.



Under these circumstances the Bishop of Annecy announced that he

would visit Morzine to administer Confirmation, and word appears

to have spread that he would give a more orthodox completion to

the work already done, by exorcising the devils who remained.

Immediately several new cases of possession appeared; young

girls who had been cured were again affected; the embers thus

kindled were fanned into a flame by a "mission" which sundry

priests held in the parish to arouse the people to their

religious duties--a mission in Roman Catholic countries being

akin to a "revival" among some Protestant sects.  Multitudes of

young women, excited by the preaching and appeals of the clergy,

were again thrown into the old disease, and at the coming of the

good bishop it culminated.



The account is given in the words of an eye-witness:



"At the solemn entrance of the bishop into the church, the

possessed persons threw themselves on the ground before him, or

endeavoured to throw themselves upon him, screaming frightfully,

cursing, blaspheming, so that the people at large were struck

with horror.  The possessed followed the bishop, hooted him, and

threatened him, up to the middle of the church.  Order was only

established by the intervention of the soldiers.  During the

confirmation the diseased redoubled their howls and infernal

vociferations, and tried to spit in the face of the bishop and to

tear off his pastoral raiment.  At the moment when the prelate

gave his benediction a still more outrageous scene took place.

The violence of the diseased was carried to fury, and from all

parts of the church arose yells and fearful howling; so

frightful was the din that tears fell from the eyes of many of

the spectators, and many strangers were thrown into

consternation."



Among the very large number of these diseased persons there were

only two men; of the remainder only two were of advanced age;

the great majority were young women between the ages of eighteen

and twenty-five years.



The public authorities shortly afterward intervened, and sought

to cure the disease and to draw the people out of their mania by

singing, dancing, and sports of various sorts, until at last it

was brought under control.[406]



[406] See Tissot, L'Imagination: ses Bienfaits et ses Egarements

sutout dans le Domaine du Merveilleux, Paris, 1868, liv. iv, ch.

vii, S 7: Les Possedees de Morzine; also Constans, Relation sur

une Epidemie de Hystero-Demonopathies, Paris, 1863.





Scenes similar to these, in their essential character, have

arisen more recently in Protestant countries, but with the

difference that what has been generally attributed by Roman

Catholic ecclesiastics to Satan is attributed by Protestant

ecclesiastics to the Almighty.  Typical among the greater

exhibitions of this were those which began in the Methodist

chapel at Redruth in Cornwall--convulsions, leaping, jumping,

until some four thousand persons were seized by it.  The same

thing is seen in the ruder parts of America at "revivals" and

camp meetings.  Nor in the ruder parts of America alone.  In

June, 1893, at a funeral in the city of Brooklyn, one of the

mourners having fallen into hysterical fits, several other cases

at once appeared in various parts of the church edifice, and some

of the patients were so seriously affected that they were taken

to a hospital.



In still another field these exhibitions are seen, but more after

a medieval pattern:  in the Tigretier of Abyssinia we have

epidemics of dancing which seek and obtain miraculous cures.



Reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missionaries

from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in some of them

the characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our

Gospels, and is therefore inclined to attribute them to

Satan.[407]



[407] For the cases in Brooklyn, see the New York Tribune of

about June 10, 1893.  For the Tigretier, with especially

interesting citations, see Hecker, chap. iii, sec. 1.  For the

cases in western Africa, see the Rev. J. L. Wilson, Western

Africa, p. 217.









III.  THEOLOGICAL "RESTATEMENTS."--FINAL TRIUMPH

OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW AND METHODS.





But, happily, long before these latter occurrences, science had

come into the field and was gradually diminishing this class of

diseases.  Among the earlier workers to this better purpose was

the great Dutch physician Boerhaave.  Finding in one of the

wards in the hospital at Haarlem a number of women going into

convulsions and imitating each other in various acts of frenzy,

he immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst

of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared that he would

burn the arms of the first woman who fell into convulsions.  No

more cases occurred.[408]



[408] See Figuier, Histoire de Merveilleux, vol. i, p. 403.





These and similar successful dealings of medical science with

mental disease brought about the next stage in the theological

development.  The Church sought to retreat, after the usual

manner, behind a compromise.  Early in the eighteenth century

appeared a new edition of the great work by the Jesuit Delrio

which for a hundred years had been a text-book for the use of

ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the

part played by Satan in diseases was changed:  it was suggested

that, while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that

Satan enter the human body in order to make these causes

effective.  This work claims that Satan "attacks lunatics at the

full moon, when their brains are full of humours"; that in other

cases of illness he "stirs the black bile"; and that in cases of

blindness and deafness he "clogs the eyes and ears."  By the

close of the century this "restatement" was evidently found

untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in

England.



In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published

in 1797, under the article Daemoniacs, the orthodox view was

presented in the following words:  "The reality of demoniacal

possession stands upon the same evidence with the gospel system

in general."



This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological

sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into

the modern sceptical world without some qualification.  Another

view was therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the

New Testament "adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those

unfortunate persons who were generally imagined to be possessed

with demons."  Two or three editions contained this curious

compromise; but near the middle of the present century the whole

discussion was quietly dropped.



Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views,

pressed on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr. Rhodes

at Lyons curing a very serious case of possession by the use of a

powerful emetic; yet myth-making came in here also, and it was

stated that when the emetic produced its effect people had seen

multitudes of green and yellow devils cast forth from the mouth

of the possessed.



The last great demonstration of the old belief in England was

made in 1788.  Near the city of Bristol at that time lived a

drunken epileptic, George Lukins.  In asking alms, he insisted

that he was "possessed," and proved it by jumping, screaming,

barking, and treating the company to a parody of the Te Deum.



He was solemnly brought into the Temple Church, and seven

clergymen united in the effort to exorcise the evil spirit.

Upon their adjuring Satan, he swore "by his infernal den" that he

would not come out of the man--"an oath," says the chronicler,

"nowhere to be found but in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, from

which Lukins probably got it."



But the seven clergymen were at last successful, and seven devils

were cast out, after which Lukins retired, and appears to have

been supported during the remainder of his life as a monument of

mercy.



With this great effort the old theory in England seemed

practically exhausted.



Science had evidently carried the stronghold.  In 1876, at a

little town near Amiens, in France, a young woman suffering with

all the usual evidences of diabolic possession was brought to the

priest.  The priest was besought to cast out the devil, but he

simply took her to the hospital, where, under scientific

treatment, she rapidly became better.[409]



[409] See Figuier; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernale,

article Posseses.





The final triumph of science in this part of the great field has

been mainly achieved during the latter half of the present

century.



Following in the noble succession of Paracelsus and John Hunter

and Pinel and Tuke and Esquirol, have come a band of thinkers and

workers who by scientific observation and research have developed

new growths of truth, ever more and more precious.



Among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this last

stronghold of the Prince of Darkness, may be named especially

those indicating "expectant attention"--an expectation of

phenomena dwelt upon until the longing for them becomes morbid

and invincible, and the creation of them perhaps unconscious.

Still other classes of phenomena leading to epidemics are found

to arise from a morbid tendency to imitation.  Still other

groups have been brought under hypnotism.  Multitudes more have

been found under the innumerable forms and results of hysteria.

A study of the effects of the imagination upon bodily functions

has also yielded remarkable results.



And, finally, to supplement this work, have come in an array of

scholars in history and literature who have investigated

myth-making and wonder-mongering.



Thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism which so

long hung over mental diseases, and thus have they been brought

within the firm grasp of science.[410]



[410] To go into even leading citations in this vast and

beneficent literature would take me far beyond my plan and space,

but I may name, among easily accessible authorities, Brierre de

Boismont on Hallucinations, Hulme's translation, 1860; also James

Braid, The Power of the Mind over the Body, London, 1846; Krafft-

Ebing, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888; Tuke, Influence

of the Mind on the Body, London, 1884; Maudsley, Pathology of the

Mind, London, 1879; Carpenter, Mental Physiology, sixth edition,

London, 1888; Lloyd Tuckey, Faith Cure, in The Nineteenth Century

for December, 1888; Pettigrew, Superstitions connected with the

Practice of Medicine and Surgery, London, 1844; Snell,

Hexenprocesse und Geistesstorung, Munchen, 1891. For a very

valuable study of interesting cases, see The Law of Hypnotism, by

Prof. R. S. Hyer, of the Southwestern University, Georgetown,

Texas, 1895.



As to myth-making and wonder-mongering, the general reader will

find interesting supplementary accounts in the recent works of

Andrew Lang and Baring-Gould.



A very curious evidence of the effects of the myth-making

tendency has recently come to the attention of the writer of this

article. Periodically, for many years past, we have seen, in

books of travel and in the newspapers, accounts of the wonderful

performances of the jugglers in India; of the stabbing of a child

in a small basket in the midst of an arena, and the child

appearing alive in the surrounding crowd; of seeds planted,

sprouted, and becoming well-grown trees under the hand of the

juggler; of ropes thrown into the air and sustained by invisible

force. Count de Gubernatis, the eminent professor and Oriental

scholar at Florence, informed the present writer that he had

recently seen and studied these exhibitions, and that, so far

from being wonderful, they were much inferior to the jugglery so

well known in all our Western capitals.





Conscientious men still linger on who find comfort in holding

fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession.

The sturdy declaration in the last century by John Wesley, that

"giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible," is echoed feebly

in the latter half of this century by the eminent Catholic

ecclesiastic in France who declares that "to deny possession by

devils is to charge Jesus and his apostles with imposture," and

asks, "How can the testimony of apostles, fathers of the Church,

and saints who saw the possessed and so declared, be denied?"

And a still fainter echo lingers in Protestant England.[411]



[411] See the Abbe Barthelemi, in the Dictionnaire de la

Conversation; also the Rev. W. Scott's Doctrine of Evil Spirits

proved, London, 1853; also the vigorous protest of Dean Burgon

against the action of the New Testament revisers, in substituting

the word "epileptic" for "lunatic" in Matthew xvii, 15, published

in the Quarterly Review for January, 1882.





But, despite this conscientious opposition, science has in these

latter days steadily wrought hand in hand with Christian charity

in this field, to evolve a better future for humanity.  The

thoughtful physician and the devoted clergyman are now constantly

seen working together; and it is not too much to expect that

Satan, having been cast out of the insane asylums, will ere long

disappear from monasteries and camp meetings, even in the most

unenlightened regions of Christendom.