472 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



pie product of malady, but of malady aggravated by mis- 

 management." 



Now, these statements represent a condition of things 

 as old as history, and we are called upon to account for it. 

 Granting that the insane were dangerous, and required re- 

 straint, and granting all that may be urged concerning the 

 barbarity of the times, we have yet to find the cause of the 

 apparently gratuitous ferocity of which they were the vic- 

 tims ; and this we do find in the legitimate consequences 

 of the prevailing theory of human nature. The ancient 

 philosophy taught that the body is to be despised, de- 

 graded, renounced. This view was adopted by theology, 

 and thrown into a concrete and dramatic shape, which made 

 it more capable of vivid realization by the multitude. It 

 pronounced the body to be "a sink of iniquity," the " in- 

 trenchment of Satan," a fit residence for demons. The 

 lunatic was one who had incurred Divine displeasure, and 

 was given over to the powers of darkness, by whom he was 

 " possessed." This doctrine, of which witchcraft was one 

 of the developments, abundantly explains the attitude of 

 society toward the victims of mental disorder. What more 

 suitable than dungeons, scourgings, and tortures for the de- 

 tested wretch, who was thus manifestly forsaken of God 

 and delivered over to the devil ? The merciless brute who 

 inflicted untold sufferings upon these unhappy beings 

 deemed himself, like the Inquisitor, but an instrument for 

 executing the will of Heaven. 



It availed nothing that, for thousands of years, there 

 had been a broad current of intense and powerful thought 

 in the channels of poetry, polemics, oratory, philosophy, 

 politics, theology, and devotion. All this multifarious 

 culture was powerless to arrest the evil consequences of 

 a radically erroneous view of human nature, for the simple 

 reason that the discovery of truth was not among its ob- 

 jects. It was only when a class of men, participating in 



