446 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



of gentleness and mercy, but wliicli became significant of wild 

 riot and brutality and confusion — Bethlehem Hospital became 

 "Bedlam." 



Modern art has also dwelt upon this theme, and perhaps the 

 most touching of all its exhibitions is the picture by a great 

 French master representing a tender woman bound to a column, 

 and exposed to the jeers, insults, and missiles of street ruffians.* 



Here and there, even in the worst of times, men arose who 

 attempted to promote a more humane view, but with little effect. 

 One expositor of St. Matthew, having ventured to recall the fact 

 that some of the insane were spoken of in the New Testament as 

 madmen, and to suggest that their madness might be caused by 

 the moon, was answered that their madness was not caused by the 

 moon, but by the devil, who avails himself of the moonlight for 

 his work.f 



One result of this idea was a mode of cure which especially 

 aggravated and spread mental disease — the promotion of great 

 religious processions. Troops of men and women, crying, howl- 

 ing, imploring saints, beating themselves with whips, visited vari- 

 ous sacred shrines, images, and places, in the hope of driving off 

 the powers of evil. The only result was an increase in the num- 

 bers of the diseased. 



For hundreds of years this idea of diabolic possession was 

 steadily developed. It was believed that devils entered into ani- 

 mals ; and animals were accordingly exorcised, tried, tortured, 

 convicted, and executed. The great St. Ambrose tells us that a 

 priest, while saying mass, was troubled by the croaking of frogs 

 in a neighboring marsh, and that he exorcised them, and so 

 stopped their noise. St. Bernard, as the monkish chroniclers tell 

 us, mounting the pulpit to preach in his abbey, was interrupted 

 by a cloud of flies; straightway the saint uttered the sacred 

 formula of excommunication, when the flies fell dead upon the 

 pavement in heaps, and were cast out with shovels ! A formula 

 of exorcism attributed to a saint of the ninth century, and which 

 remained in use down to a recent period, especially declares 

 insects injurious to crops to be possessed of evil spirits, and 

 names, among the animals to be excommunicated or exorcised, 

 mice, moles, and serpents. The use of exorcism against cater- 

 pillars and grasshoppers was also common. In the thirteenth 

 century the Bishop of Lausanne, finding that the eels in Lake 

 Leman troubled the fishermen, attempted to remove the difficulty 

 by exorcism. 



* The typical picture representing a priest's struggle with the devil is in the city gal- 

 lery of Rouen. The modern picture is Robert Fleury's painting in the Luxembourg Gallery 

 at Paris. 



f See Giraldus Cambrensis, cited by Tuke, as above, p. 79. 



