438 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The first great tributary poured into this stream, as we ap- 

 proach, the bloom of the middle ages, appears to have come from 

 the brain of Michael Psellus. Mingling scriptural texts, Platonic 

 philosophy, and theological views of great doctors of the Church, 

 with wild statements obtained from lunatics, he gave forth, about 

 the beginning of the twelfth century, a treatise on " The Work of 

 Demons." " Sacred science " was vastly enriched thereby in 

 various ways ; but two of his conclusions, the results of his most 

 profound thought, enforced by theologians and popularized by 

 preachers, soon took a special hold upon the thinking portion of 

 the people at large. The first of these, which he easily based upon 

 Scripture and St. Basil, was that, since all demons suffer by ma- 

 terial fire and brimstone, they must have material bodies ; the 

 second was that, since all demons are by nature cold, they 

 gladly seek a genial warmth by entering the bodies of men and 

 beasts.* 



Fed by this stream of thought, and developed in the warm at- 

 mosphere of mediaeval devotion, the idea of demoniacal possession 

 as the main source of lunacy grew and blossomed and bore fruit 

 in noxious luxuriance. 



There had, indeed, come into the middle ages an inheritance 

 of scientific thought. The ideas of Hippocrates, Celius Aurelianus, 

 Galen, and their followers, were from time to time revived ; the 

 Arabian physicians, the school of Salerno, such writers as Salicetus, 

 Guy de Chauliac, and even some of the religious orders, did some- 

 thing to keep scientific doctrines alive ; but the tide of theological 

 thought was too strong — it became dangerous even to seem to 

 name possible limits to diabolical power. To deny Satan was 

 atheism ; and perhaps nothing did so much to fasten the epithet 

 " atheist " upon the medical profession as the suspicion that it did 

 not fully acknowledge diabolical interference in mental disease. 

 Of this feeling we have a monument in the mediaeval proverb, 

 " Where there are three physicians there are two atheists." Fol- 



" Beziehungen des Damonen- und Hexenwesens zur deutschen Irrenpflege," in the "AUge- 

 meine Zeitschrift f iir Psychiatric," Berlin, 1888, Bd. xliv, Hft. 25. For Roman Catholic 

 authority, see Addis and Arnold, " Catholic Dictionary," article " Emergumens." For a 

 brief and eloquent summary, see Kraft-Ebing, " Lehrbuch der Psychiatric," as above ; and, 

 for a clear view of the transition from pagan mildness in the care of the insane to severity 

 and cruelty under the Christian Church, see Maudsley, " The Pathology of Mind," London, 

 18'i'9, p. 523. See also Buchmann, "Die unfreie und die freie Kirche," Breslau, 1873, p. 

 251. For other citations, see Kirchhof, as above, pp. 334-336. For Bishop Nemesius, see 

 " Trelat," p. 48. For an admirable account of Agobard's general position in regard to this 

 and allied superstitions, see Reginald Lane Poole's " Illustrations of the History of Mediaeval 

 Thought," London, 1884. 



* See Baas and Werner, cited by Kirchhof, as above ; also Lecky, " Rationalism in 

 Europe," i, 68, and note, New York, 1884. As to Basil's belief in the corporeality of 

 devils, see his " Commentary on Isaiah," cap, i. 



