152 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



singing, dancing, and sports of various sorts, until at last it was 

 brought under control.* 



Scenes similar to these, in their essential character, have arisen 

 more recently in Protestant countries, but with the difference that 

 what has been generally attributed by Roman Catholic ecclesias- 

 tics to Satan is attributed by Protestant ecclesiastics to the Al- 

 mighty. Typical among the greater exhibitions of this were those 

 which began in the Methodist chapel. at Redruth in Cornwall — 

 convulsions, leaping, jumping, until some four thousand persons 

 were seized by it. The same thing is seen in the ruder parts of 

 America at " revivals " and camp-meetings. 



And in still another great field these exhibitions are seen, but 

 more after a mediaeval pattern. In the Tigretier of Abyssinia we 

 have epidemics of dancing which seek and obtain miraculous 

 cures. 



Reports of similar manifestations are also sent from missiona- 

 ries from the west coast of Africa, one of whom sees in some of 

 them the characteristics of cases of possession mentioned in our 

 Gospels, and is therefore inclined to attribute them to Satan, f 



But happily, long before these latter occurrences, science had 

 come into the field and was gradually diminishing this class of 

 diseases. Among the earlier workers to this better purpose was 

 the great Dutch physician Boerhaave. Finding in one of the 

 wards in the hospital at Haarlem a number of women going into 

 convulsions and imitating each other in various acts of frenzy, he 

 immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst of 

 the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared he would burn 

 the arms of the first woman who fell into convulsions. No more 

 cases occurred. J 



These and similar successful dealings of medical science with 

 mental disease brought about the next stage in the theological de- 

 velopment. The Church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, 

 behind a compromise. Early in the eighteenth century appeared 

 a new edition of the great work by the Jesuit Delrio which for a 

 hundred years had been a text-book for the use of ecclesiastics in 

 fighting witchcraft. But in this edition the part played by Satan 

 in diseases was changed. It was suggested that, while diseases 

 have natural causes, it is necessary that Satan enter the human 

 body in order to make these causes effective. Delrio claims that 



* See Tissot, " L'Imagination : ses Bienfaits et ses lilgarements surtout dans le Domaine 

 du Merveilleux," Paris, 1858, par. 7; "Les Possedes de Morzines"; also Constans, "Rela- 

 tion sur une Epid6mie de Hystero-Demonopathie," Paris, 1863. 



f For tho Tigretier, with especially interesting citations, see Hecker's " Essay," chap, iii, 

 sec. 1 ; for the cases in western Africa, see the Rev. J. L. Wilson, " Western Africa," p. 

 217. 



\ See Figuier, " Histoire du Merveilleux," vol. i, p. 402. 



