Edmond Dupouy

“ In a word, magic became sorcery, and its adepts were no longer recruited save in the infamous and ignorant classes of society. The adoration of nature and God, the immortality of the soul, the grand ceremonies held at the foot of gigantic oak trees, gave way to hideous demons, gross superstitions, witchcraft, and the most immoral abberations. Occultism still subjugated the masses, but the science had fallen into the hands of the profane and of charlatans. ”

“ The truth, no matter how hard to reach, and rugged though its nature, must be related as truly as that found in God’s book; and it shall be presented in a living form, so human and natural that it will be accepted by all the world, and awaken in the soul of mankind a common thought. What use is there, unless supported on eternal conscience, to recount to good and true men the histories that they love to have related, histories they themselves have made? ”

“ He refused to blindly submit to the authority of the so-called masters in physics, and reserved the right to freely discuss their doctrines. “Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle,” he remarks, “great as they are, never knew all. Science is the work of many successions of generations, and that which makes its grandeur so mysterious is that the more we know the more new problems are presented us for solution. Science, like, Nature, is infinite.” ”

“ Says Rabelais: “A single labor pain of this world is to manufacture blood continually. In this work each member has its proper office. Nutrition is furnished by the whole of nature; it is the bread, it is wine—these are the aliments of all species. In order to find and prepare this material, the hands of mankind work, the feet climb98 and bear the machinery, the eyes lead us, the tongue tastes for us, the teeth masticate our food, while the stomach receives and digests.” ”

“ Were these girls attacked by a malady, a complex hallucination of the senses that led them to firmly believe they were possessed or owned by a supernatural being who obliged them to abdicate their free will in his favor? Were they only, after all, prostitutes suffering from nymphomania? We can only insist that prostitution, or a low standard of morality, enters largely into the history of those possessed by incubi. ”

“ All savants who have studied the literary and historical part of medicine fully recognize the powerful interest it offers, especially that medicine portrayed in the works of poets and dramatic authors of the Middle Ages. It is in the works of these writers, in fact, that we find the most exact appreciation of medical ideas of the epoch, because we can judge their morals, criticise their faults, account for their tendencies—all without bringing in medical science at any given moment, with its teachings, errors, and prejudices. ”

“ Dominated by this selfish instinct the human mind shamelessly displayed its cowardice, egotism and superstition. Social ties were rudely sundered, the affections of the heart laid aside. The sick were deserted by their relatives; all flew with horror from the plague-breathing air and contact with the dreadful disease. The corpses of the victims of the epidemic abandoned without sepulture exhaled a horrible putrid odor, and became the starting point of new infectious centres. The worse disorder overthrew all conditions of existence. Human passion raged uncontrolled ”

“ One of the most celebrated doctors of the Church, Origen, of Alexandria, in his Apology for Christianity, remarks: “There are demons that produce famines, sterility, corruption of the air, epidemics; they flutter surrounded by fogs in the lower regions of the atmosphere, and are drawn by the blood of their victims in the incense that the pagans offer them as their Divinity. Without the odor of sacrifice, these demons could not preserve their influence. They have the most exquisite senses, are capable of the greatest activity, and possess the most extended experience.” ”

“ They thus blaspheme the Just and the Saints of God, whom they make out to be demons of cruelty. These canting hypocrites, the clergy, preach in my native Province that Saint Anthony gives erysipelas, Saint Eutrope gives dropsy, Saint Gildas makes people insane, and Saint Gildus perpetuates the gout. I am amazed that our glorious King allows these impostors to preach such scandalous lies in his realm; and they should be punished rather than those who, by magic or otherwise, may bring the plague into the country. The plague only kills the body; but clerical impostors poison human souls. ”

“ Here our anatomist dwells somewhat at length on the formation of the blood and the part played in digestion by our organs, adding:
“What joy among these dispensing officers of the body when, after their complex work and hard labor, they see this stream of red gold. Each limb separates and opens to assimilate or purify anew this treasure, the blood. The heart, with its musical diastole and systole, subtilizes it so that, met at the ventricle, it is perfection; then, by the veins, it returns from all the limbs. The harmony of Heaven is no greater than that of the body of man. ”

“ There was no need of this kind of witchcraft, pour nouer l’aiguilette, in a timid boy, already subjugated by fear of the devil. Certainly, if the sorcerers had ideas of that force which is known to-day as suggestion, they could very easily destroy the virile power of the subject by governing his will and thoughts, his physical and moral personality. When we can confiscate the physical anatomy of a man he is reduced to all manner of impotencies. Who will affirm that suggestion is not one of the mysteries of sorcery? ”

“ Aside from the rivalry for public patronage physicians are a very social class of men, as witness their many festive meetings. We banquet in honor of St. Luke the physician, and St. Come, after each thesis, at anniversaries, at the election of the Dean, and on many other occasions. It is these co-fraternal meetings at which are reinagurated the old feelings of good-fellowship; our little quarrels only serve to discipline the medical body and to increase the grandeur of the Faculty. It is the constant rubbing of surfaces that makes the true professional metal glitter. ”

“ Etienne Dolet, the poet, philosopher and celebrated printer, who laid down his life in opposition to monarchial and religious tyranny, was the very particular friend and adviser of Francois Rabelais, and one day traced for him the programme of a book destined, to his mind, to unveil the vices and console the mass of victims who suffered from social iniquities.
“Yes,” responded Rabelais, in answer, [102] “a book truly humane must be addressed to all. The time has arrived when philosophy must leave the clouds and shine like the sun for the entire universe. ”

“ Without writing to prejudice the question, I believe, in my turn, that I can solemnly affirm that this force has intimate connection with the soul, the mind or the ministerial part of our being, as it is called; that it acts on our ideas as well as on our physiological functions, and it is to my mind the destiny of humanity to investigate its essence and study its phenomena, its manifestations and all its sensible effects by all our senses and means of investigation. ”

“ This opinion of the learned English physicist proves, once more, that we are right in connecting Demonomania to the magic of antiquity and to modern spiritualism. One must be perfectly blind or of poor judgment not to see the connecting links that unite these various phenomena. And if our men of science dare no longer say that these facts are worthy of credit, although refusing to investigate the same, it is because they lack courage, it is because they dare not brave the criticism of pretended strong-minded men and the jests of the ignorant. ”

“ Now, if this man cared to magnetize individually each of these nuns in the silence and obscurity of the confessional, and should then suggest to them that they were possessed by all the demons known to sorcery, what would occur? Let us suppose again that he should carry his physiological power further and put his subjects into an ecstacy, catalepsy or lethargy—into a condition where marked hallucinations might occur and nervous excitation be provoked, how long would it be before this man could make these women similar to those who once lived in the convent of the Ursulines at Loudun? ”

“ If history authorizes us, in fact, to conclude that the occult sciences have existed from the earliest periods of antiquity, that the people who brought learning from the Orient to the Occident, have at all times admitted the existence of genii, angels, and demons, it is easy to explain the action that such mysterious traditions would have on the ignorant minds of the peasantry of the Middle Ages, bowed under the yoke of slavery to feudal Lords and the clerical despotism of the Romish Church. ”

“ Every night they are awakened by the sound of noises,—blows resound on the floor and raps come on the partitions; every few minutes there are peals of ghostly laughter, whistling, clapping of hands to attract attention; these nervous persons see spirits and are startled at sudden apparitions of the dead; specters seize them by the feet, nose, ears, and even go so far as sit on their chests. ”

“ Let us take the history of this famous epidemic of demonidolatry of other days and examine the documentary evidence offered against those accused of the crime of sorcery, passing the testimony through the crucible of modern science, pathology, physiology,36 together with all observable symptoms, holding in view meanwhile modern neurological discoveries; let us strive, in a word, to solve this great psychological question, which has greatly agitated the human understanding for four hundred years past. ”

“ In this manner wrote Hippocrates in his great work, ‘Liber de Aere, Aqua, et Locis’: ‘There is in Scythia a tribe which has been more impotent than eunuchs to venereal desires, because these people live continually on horseback and hard work. To the contrary, idleness, the mother of luxury, begets sexual passion.’”
There is no necessity for long commentaries to demonstrate that manual labor and active physical exercise lessen the natural tendency to erotic ideas. The workingman and peasant are, as all the world knows, less given to the passion of love than the idle and luxurious of the cities. ”

“ Although, less well known than those names just mentioned, we must not forget to note that group of talented men who contributed with Ponzinibus, Alciat, Zacchias and Jean Wier in the restoration to medicine of the study of facts, thus freeing the healing art of many speculative ideas derived from the Middle Ages; we allude to such men as Baillou, Francois de la Boe (Sylvius) , Felix Plater, Sennert, Willis, Bonet, and many other gallant souls who assisted in freeing medicine from the religious autocracy that overshadowed it,—men who were the avant couriers of modern positivism. ”

“ During the three years that I have experimented in psychology with Dr. Puel and his friends, there has been no seance where we have not been able to determine more or less important phenomena of percussion. An experiment I love to make is that of striking my fingers on the table, either to imitate the music of a band with drum accompaniment with some known air, and the same sound is immediately produced on the under surface of the piece of furniture, with the same rhythm appearing to be invoked by an invisible hand performing under the table. ”

“ Although modern Faculties are prone to insist that the real science of medicine only dates back its origin to the discovery of the microscope, and that the study of antique medicine is only a retrospective exposition calculated to show the slight scientific value of ancient observations, I assert that the many observations recorded by our medical ancestors are of immense value. ”

“ We cannot dwell too long on the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, to which we have, perhaps, added some historical facts which are new and which we believe it to be our duty to publish, seeing a connection with modern hypnotism. We shall thus open a new field for investigation on strange affections, classed up to the present time in all varieties of monomania, but which appear to us to belong to a variety of mental pathology independent of insanity, properly speaking. ”

“ Notwithstanding sarcasm, in spite of epigrams and calumny, medicine has always been a source of sublime consolation to the sick and afflicted, the sufferer—rich and poor. At all ages the priest has been inclined to indulge in the practice of physic, and it was at their instigation that those nuns known as Sisters of Charity practiced medicine to a certain extent in the Middle Ages. In the twelfth century we see the nuns of the Convent of Paraclet, in Champagne, following the advice of Abelard, essaying the surgical treatment of the sick. ”

“ We believe what is, is the truth, and in order to best judge the facts narrated, it is well to first arrange our knowledge as to the psychological condition of Occidental populations during the Middle Ages, a condition that was only the continuation of the ideas and traditions of antiquity, modified by the fanatical prejudices of a new religion and by a cruel and barbarous social Constitution. ”

“ Boersch: “In 591 there was a great mortality throughout our country, so that men fell down dying in the streets, expiring suddenly in their houses, or even at business. When a person sneezed his soul was apt to fly the body; hence the expression on sneezing, ‘God bless you!’ And when a person yawned they made the sign of the cross before their mouths.”
Such are the documents we possess on the great epidemic of inguinal plague of the fourth century, documents furnished by historians, to whom medical history is indebted, and not from medical authors, who left no marks at that period. ”