Maxime du Camp

“ These great men, with all their sagacity, with all their learning, would seem never to have heard of the monk Bacon's dictum: "We cannot determine by speculation or by imagination what Nature will do, or what endure; all that must be made out by experiment." When illustrious savants like these were firm believers in demonism, it need not cause us any surprise to see eight hundred sorcerers burnt at the stake within sixteen years in Lorraine alone, or five hundred at Geneva in three months. ”

“ But at length the belief in demonism was forced to give way before the gradual advance of science, and in 1672 Colbert induced Louis XIV. to sign the famous ordinance forbidding the Parliament any longer to prosecute sorcerers. But this was not until over twenty thousand individuals had perished at the stake simply for having been insane.
Thus ended what we may call the thaumaturgic era of insanity, and now follows the era of repression. There were as yet no hospitals to receive the insane, who were confined in convents or in prisons, according to the violence of their disorder. ”

“ The body is but the soul's dwelling-place—a temple or a den, accordingly as its invisible inhabitant is the servant of God or of Satan. Therefore, when the soul is diseased, the treatment must regard the soul alone, which is governed by laws of its own, and is merely in juxtaposition with the body for a moment. ”

“ These are the founders of the science of Mental Alienation: others have developed their premises and added to their teachings, but to Pinel, Esquirol, Ferrus, and Roller, the human race owes a debt of everlasting gratitude for having first opened the way.—Abridged from the Revue des Deux Mondes. ”

“ The phenomenon of insensibility to pain is one of not very rare occurrence. This insensibility may be confined to a single member, or some particular locality, or it may extend to the whole body. During the middle ages all sorcerers were supposed to bear the mark of the devil, viz., the spot touched by the fiend when taking possession of his subject. ”

“ Just now, respectable women patients at the Salpêtrière, Ste.-Anne, Vaucluse, and Ville-Évard asylums solemnly assure the physicians in charge that they are pétroleuses, while men of unquestionable patriotism will tell you that they guided the Prussians up the heights of Sedan. ”

“ While thus, in France, science was engaged in establishing the moral bases of the disease, Roller was founding a model establishment in Germany, on the principle of surrounding the patient with all those influences which could bring his thoughts back into their normal courses. ”

“ On being cited to defend himself before a tribunal, he became suddenly insane, and was immured for life, that is, shut up between four walls, without food, drink, or light. In the sixteenth century Europe literally blazed with the fires lighted to punish witches and sorcerers, who were simply mad-men. Luther had a visit from the devil. Pico della Mirandola tells of Savonarola's visions, and Melanchthon holds converse with spirits. Even Ambroise Paré, the Hippocrates of modern times, believed in possession, in compacts with the devil, and the like. ”