I^EW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



435 



have saved fifteen centuries of cruelty — a truth not fully recog- 

 nized again till near the beginning of the present century — 

 the truth that insanity is brain-disease, and that the treatment of 

 it must be gentle and kind. In the sixth century Alexander of 

 Tralles presented still more fruitful researches, and taught the 

 world how to deal with melancholia; and, finally, in the seventh 

 century, this great line of scientific men, working mainly under 

 pagan auspices, was closed by Paul of JEgina, who, under the 

 protection of Caliph Omar, made still further observations and 

 additions to truth, but, above all, laid stress on the cure of 

 madness as a disease, and on the absolute necessity of mild 

 treatment. 



Such was this great succession in the apostolate of truth; 

 evidently no other has ever shown itself more directly under 

 divine grace, illumination, and .guidance. It had given to the 

 world what might have been one of its greatest blessings.* 



But, most unfortunately, there set into the early Church a cur- 

 rent of belief which was destined to bring all these noble acquisi- 

 tions of science and religion to naught, and, during centuries, to 

 inflict tortures, physical and mental, upon hundreds of thousands 

 of innocent men and women — a belief which held its cruel sway 

 for nearly eighteen centuries ; and this belief was that madness 

 was mainly or largely possession by the Devil. 



This idea of diabolic agency in mental disease grew luxuriantly 

 in all the Oriental sacred literatures, and esjDecially in that of the 

 Jews. Such cases in the Old Testament as the evil spirit in Saul, 

 which we now see to have been simply melancholy, and in the 

 New Testament the various accounts of the casting out of devils, 

 through which is refracted the beautiful and simple story of that 

 power by which Jesus of Nazareth soothed perturbed minds by 

 his presence or quelled outbursts of madness by his word, give 

 abundant examples of this. In Greece, too, an idea akin to this 

 found lodgment both in the popular belief and in the philosophy 

 of Plato and Socrates ; f and though, as we have seen, the great 

 leaders in medical science had taught with more or less distinct- 

 ness that insanity is the result of physical disease, there was a 



* For authorities regarding this development of scientific truth and mercy in antiquity, 

 see especially Kraft -Ebing, " Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie," Stuttgart, 1888, p. 40 and the 

 pages following; Trelat, " Recherches Historiques sur la Folic," Paris, 1839 ; Semelaigne, 

 " L'Alienation mentale dans I'Antiquite," Paris, 1869 ; Dagron, "Des Alienes," Paris, 18Y5; 

 also Calmeil, " De la Folic," Sprenger, and especially Isensee, " Geschichte dcr Medicin," 

 Berlin, 1840. 



f It is, indeed, extremely doubtful whether Plato himself or his contemporaries knew 

 anything of evil demons, this conception probably coming into the Greek world, as into the 

 Latin, with the Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the birth of 

 Christ ; but to the early Christians a demon was a demon, and Plato's, good or bad, were 

 pagan, and therefore devils. 



