222 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Parliament any longer to prosecute sorcerers. But this was not until 

 over twenty thousand individuals had perished at the stake simply for 

 having been insane. 



> Thus ended what we may call the thaumaturgic era of insanity, 

 and now follows the era of repression. There were as yet no hospi- 

 tals to receive the insane, who were confined in convents or in prisons, 

 according to the violence of their disorder. They were fettered, beat- 

 en, suffered to wallow in straw, exhibited to sight-seers, to gratify idle 

 curiosity, or to afford amusement. This treatment was far from being 

 such as medical science requires ; but, still, it at least was a great im- 

 provement on the stake, and was less calculated than the exorcisms of 

 the previous period to over-excite the patient. A last effort was made 

 by the clergy and the Parliaments in 1713 to recover the powers of 

 which they had been deprived by the ordinance of Louis XIV., but 

 they were unsuccessful ; and, consequently, when the Jansenist miracles 

 and diableries became the talk of Paris, the government was content 

 with simple measures of police repression. Finally, in 1768, the Par- 

 liaments declared that possession is a disease. Cagliostro was afforded 

 every facility for summoning up the devil and putting h'im en rapport 

 with the Cardinal Rohan ; and Mesmer might now assemble at his 

 famous banquet all the nervous subjects in Paris, without any hin- 

 drance on the part of king, clergy, or police. 



Science meanwhile was not idle. While justice was growing more 

 lenient toward the insane, the study of the principles to be applied in 

 the treatment of insanity engaged the earnest attention of all the great 

 physicians of Switzerland, England, Holland, Germany, Italy, and 

 France, and the various phenomena of -mental pathology were carefully 

 described by Plater, Willis, Boerhaave, Fleming, Fracassini, Morgagni, 

 Boissier de Sauvages, Lieutard, Lorry, and others. As regards the 

 question of treatment, however, these learned writers nearly all fell 

 into error, because they started out with false premises. In their time 

 the famous theory of hurnorism held undivided sway, and according 

 to this all disease came from the humors, the blood, lymph, bile, etc. ; 

 and a person was diseased to a greater or less degree, according to 

 the higher or lower degree of crudity or of coction in which his 

 humors were found. Hence there were two universal remedies, 

 which were expected to answer every malady : purging and blood- 

 letting. Violent insanity had its seat in the blood ; melancholy 

 madness, in the bile ; exalted mania, in the spleen. Baglivi, who 

 died in 1707, introduced into medicine the doctrine of solidism, 

 which attributes the cause of disease to the solid parts of the body. 

 Baglivi's writings were translated into French by Pinel, who was him- 

 self a reformer in the best sense of that word, and who introduced the 

 mild treatment of the insane in modern times. In 1791 he published 

 his "Medico-philosophical Treatise on Insanity," and 1792 was ap- 

 pointed physician-in-chief of the Bicetre Asylum. 



