1 72 Traces of Unity in the 



subject of conversation. A young woman of four or 

 five and twenty, who could neither read nor write, was 

 seized with a nervous fever, during which, according 

 to the asseverations of all the priests and monks of the 

 neighbourhood, she became possessed with a very learned 

 devil. She continued incessantly talking Latin, Greek, 

 and Hebrew, in very pompous tones, and with most 

 distinct enunciation. This possession was rendered 

 more probable by the known fact that she was a heretic. 

 Voltaire humorously advises the devil to decline all 

 acquaintance with medical men, and it would have been 

 more to his reputation if he had taken this advice in the 

 present instance. The case had attracted the particular 

 attention of a young physician, and by his statements 

 many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited 

 the town and made cross-examination on the spot. 

 Sheets full of her ravings were taken down from her 

 mouth, and were found to consist of sentences coherent 

 and intelligible each for itself, but with little or no 

 connection with each other. Of these a small portion 

 only could be traced to the Bible ; the remainder 

 seemed to be in the Rabbinical dialect. All trick or 

 conspiracy was out of the question. Not only had this 

 young woman ever been a harmless, simple creature, 

 but she was labouring under a nervous fever. In the 

 town in which she had been resident for many years as 

 a servant in different families, no solution presented 

 itself. The young physician, however, determined to 

 trace her past life step by step, for the patient herself 

 was incapable of returning a rational answer. He at 

 length discovered the place where her parents had lived, 

 travelled thither, found them dead, but an uncle sur- 

 viving, and from him learnt that the patient had been 

 charitably taken by an old Protestant pastor at nine 



