HUMANITY AND INSANITY 



219 



disorders of the mental faculties are produced by a lesion of the or- 

 gans 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 iEgina reasserted the principles maintained 

 by Galen and by Areta3us ; 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 him- 

 self 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 demon- 

 ology, 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 tl at 

 the prevailing notions of a given period are very rapidly taken up by 

 the insane, and by them distorted into grotesque shapes, with a uni- 

 formity resembling the symptoms of epidemic disorders. This phe- 

 nomenon is of daily occurrence. Thus, accordingly as France is ruled 

 by a king, an emperor, or a president, those insane persons who im- 

 agine themselves to be somebody, claim the rank of president, emper- 

 or, or king, as the case may be. Just now, respectable women patients 

 at the Salpetriere, Ste.-Anne, Vaucluse, and Ville-FJvard asylums sol- 

 emnly assure the physicians in charge that they are p&troleuses / 

 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 expres- 

 sion in demoniacal possession. 



1 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 niuth, because numero Deus impare gaudet God loves odd 

 numbers. 



