2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tending from one nunnery to another ; and they were obliged to resort 

 to some such severe measures as I have mentioned to drive it out. It 

 was set down in some instances to demoniacal possession, but the devil 

 was very easily exorcised by some pretty strong threat on the part of 

 the medical man. The celebrated physician Boerhaave was called in 

 to a case of that kind in an orphan asylum in Holland, and I think his 

 remedy was a red-hot iron. He heated the poker in the fire, and said 

 that the next girl who fell into one of these fits should be burnt in the 

 arm; this was quite sufficient to stop it. In Scotland at one time 

 there was a great tendency to breaking out into fits of this kind in the 

 churches. This was particularly the case in Shetland ; and a very wise 

 minister there told them that the thing could not be permitted, and 

 that the next person who gave way in this manner as he was quite 

 sure they could control themselves if they pleased should be taken 

 out and ducked in a pond near. There was no necessity at all to put 

 his threat into execution. Here, you see, the stronger motive is sub- 

 stituted for the weaker one, and the stronger motive is sufficient to 

 induce the individual to put a check upon herself. I have said that it 

 usually happens with the female sex, though sometimes it occurs with 

 young men who have more or less of the same constitutional tendency. 

 What is necessary is to induce a stronger motive, which will call forth 

 the power of self-control which has been previously abandoned. 



Now, this tendency, which here shows itself in convulsive move- 

 ments of the body, will also show itself in what we may call convul- 

 sive action of the Mind ; that is, in the excitement of violent feelings 

 and even passions, leading to the most extraordinary manifestations 

 of different kinds. The early Christians, you know, practised self- 

 mortification to a very great degree ; and considered that these pen- 

 ances were so much scored up to the credit side of their account in 

 heaven ; that, in fact, they were earning a title to future salvation by 

 self-mortification. Among other means of self-mortification, they 

 scourged themselves. That was practised by individuals. But in the 

 middle ages this disposition to self-mortification would attack whole 

 communities, especially under the dominant idea that the world was 

 coming to an end. In the middle of the thirteenth century, about 1250, 

 there was this prevalent idea that the world was coming to an end ; 

 and whole communities gave themselves up to this self-mortification 

 by whipping themselves. These Flagellants went about in bands with 

 banners, and even music, carrying scourges ; and then, at a given sig- 

 nal, every one would strip off the upper garment (men, women, and 

 children joined these bands), and proceed to flog themselves very 

 severely indeed, or to flog each other. This subsided for a time, but 

 it broke out again during and immediately after that terrible plague 

 which is known as the " black death," which devastated Europe in the 

 reign of Edward III., about the year 1340. This black death seems to 

 have been the Eastern plague in a very severe form, which we have 



