586 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



case of chronic meningitis. Tlie work of German men of science 

 in this field is noble indeed. A great succession, from Wier to 

 Vircliow, have erected a barrier against which all the efforts of 

 reactionists beat in vain.* 



In America, the belief in diabolic influence had, in the early 

 colonial period, full control. The Mathers supported it fully, and 

 the Salem witchcraft horrors were among its results ; but the dis- 

 cussion of that folly by Calef struck it a severe blow, and a better 

 influence spread rapidly throughout the colonies. 



By the middle of the eighteenth century the old belief in dia- 

 bolic possession had practically disappeared from all enlightened 

 countries. In Protestant Germany, where it had raged most 

 severely, it was, as a rule, cast out of the church formulas, cate- 

 chisms, and hymns, and became more and more a subject for 

 jocose allusion. f From force of habit, and for the sake of con- 

 sistency, some of the more conservative theological authorities 

 continued to repeat the old arguments, and there were many 

 who insisted upon the belief as absolutely necessary to ordi- 

 nary orthodoxy ; but it is evident that it had become a mere 

 conventionality, that men only believed that they believed it, 

 and now a reform seemed j)ossible in the treatment of the 

 insane. 



But, although the old superstition had l^een discarded, the in- 

 evitable conservatism in theology and medicine caused many old 

 abuses to be continued for years after the theological basis for 

 them had really disappeared. There still lingered also a feeling 

 of indifference toward madmen, engendered by the early feeling 

 of hostility toward them, which sufficed to prevent for many years 

 any practical reforms. 



What that old feeling had been, even under the most favorable 

 circumstances, and among the best of men, we have seen in the 

 fact that Sir Thomas More ordered acknowledged lunatics to be 

 publicly flogged ; and it will be remembered that Shakespeare 

 makes one of his characters refer to madmen as deserving "a 

 dark house and a whip." And what the old treatment was and 

 continued to be we know but too well. Taking Protestant Eng- 

 land as an example — and it was probably the most humane — we 

 have a chain of testimony. Toward the end of the sixteenth cent- 

 ury, Bethlehem Hospital was reported too loathsome for any man 

 to enter ; in the seventeenth century, John Evelyn found it no 

 better ; in the eighteenth, Hogarth's pictures and contemporary 



* See Kirchhoff, pp. 181-187; also Langin, "Religion und Ilexenprozess," as above 

 cited. 



f Luther's great hymn, " Ein' feste Burg," remained, of course, a prominent exception 

 to the rule ; but a popular proverb came to express the general feeling: '•'• Auf Teufel reimt 

 sich Zweifel." See Langin, as above, pp. 545, 546. 



