disorders of the mental faculties are produced by a lesion of the organs of thought, which are situate in the brain. Yet we are not to imagine that in Galen's day the art of healing was faultless; indeed, so far is this from being the case, that we find his contemporaries making large use of philters, charms, and magical formulae. In the seventh century Paulus of Ægina reasserted the principles maintained by Galen and by Aretæus; but with him the line of rational medical tradition comes to a close, and henceforth, for centuries, it would seem as if the doctors shared in the disorder which they assumed to cure. The madman was now no longer regarded as a sick patient, nor even as a human being. He was treated as a wild-beast—half brute, half demon; soon his disorder was called "satanic possession," and he himself burned at the stake.
The middle ages were a period of upheaval, when every thing was swallowed up in the bottomless abyss of scholasticism and demonology, and medicine became a routine of superstitious practices.[1] Such and such a plant was considered beneficial, if gathered at the new moon; but deadly poison, if at the moon's wane. Science, art, and literature, went down in the storm, and wars, battles, pestilence, and famine, were the order of the day. As God was invoked in vain, men turned to Satan. The belief in the devil was universal, and the world became a hell. Now both science and experience show that the prevailing notions of a given period are very rapidly taken up by the insane, and by them distorted into grotesque shapes, with a uniformity resembling the symptoms of epidemic disorders. This phenomenon is of daily occurrence. Thus, accordingly as France is ruled by a king, an emperor, or a president, those insane persons who imagine themselves to be somebody, claim the rank of president, emperor, or king, as the case may be. Just now, respectable women patients at the Salpêtrière, Ste.-Anne, Vaucluse, and Ville-Évard asylums solemnly assure the physicians in charge that they are pétroleuses, while men of unquestionable patriotism will tell you that they guided the Prussians up the heights of Sedan. The phenomenon therefore of diabolic possession in the middle ages is perfectly natural. The calamities attendant on continual wars had so enervated the people, that they were fit subjects for all manner of mental disorder; and this, taking form from the prevailing ideas of the times, found expression in demoniacal possession.
- ↑ Borden, who lived in the seventeenth century, and was a man of keen intelligence, tells us of a monk he knew, who practised bloodletting to an unlimited extent. After three bleedings, he would add a fourth, for the reason that there are four seasons, four quarters of the globe, and four cardinal points. After the fourth he took a fifth, because there are five fingers on the hand. To the fifth he would add a sixth, for did not God create the world in six days? But the number must be made seven, there being seven days in the week, and seven sages of Greece. An eighth bleeding had to follow, eight being a round number; and a ninth, because numero Deus impare gaudet—God loves odd numbers.
