Burn, Witch, Burn!

I am a medical man specializing in neurology and diseases of the brain. My peculiar field is abnormal
psychology, and in it I am recognized as an expert. I am closely connected with two of the foremost
hospitals in New York, and have received many honors in this country and abroad. I set this down,
risking identification, not through egotism but because I desire to show that I was competent to observe,
and competent to bring practiced scientific judgment upon, the singular events I am about to relate.
I say that I risk identification, because Lowell is not my name. It is a pseudonym, as are the names of all
the other characters in this narrative. The reasons for this evasion will become increasingly apparent.
Yet I have the strongest feeling that the facts and observations which in my case-books are grouped
under the heading of The Dolls of Mme. Mandilip should be clarified, set down in orderly sequence and
be made known. Obviously, I could do this in the form of a report to one of my medical societies, but I
am too well aware of the way my colleagues would receive such a paper, and with what suspicion, pity
or even abhorrence, they would henceforth regard me so counter to accepted notions of cause and effect