Following in the noble succession of Paracelsus and John Hunter and Pinel and Tuke and Esquirol, have come a band of thinkers and workers who by scientific observation and research have developed new growths of truth, ever more and more precious.
Among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this last stronghold of the Prince of Darkness, may be named especially those indicating "expectant attention"—an expectation of phenomena dwelt upon until the longing for them becomes morbid and invincible, and the creation of them perhaps unconscious. Still other classes of phenomena leading to epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency to imitation. Still other groups have been brought under hypnotism. Multitudes more have been found under the innumerable forms and results of hysteria. A study of the effects of the imagination upon bodily functions has also yielded remarkable results.
And, finally, to supplement this work, have come in an array of scholars in history and literature who have investigated myth-making and wonder-mongering.
Thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism which so long hung over mental diseases, and thus have they been brought within the firm grasp of science.(410)
(410) To go into even leading citations in this vast and beneficent
literature would take me far beyond my plan and space, but I may
name, among easily accessible authorities, Brierre de Boismont on
Hallucinations, Hulme's translation, 1860; also James Braid, The Power
of the Mind over the Body, London, 1846; Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der
Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1888; Tuke, Influence of the Mind on the Body,
London, 1884; Maudsley, Pathology of the Mind, London, 1879; Carpenter,
Mental Physiology, sixth edition, London, 1888; Lloyd Tuckey, Faith
Cure, in The Nineteenth Century for December, 1888; Pettigrew,
Superstitions connected with the Practice of Medicine and Surgery,
London, 1844; Snell, Hexenprocesse und Geistesstorung, Munchen,
1891. For a very valuable study of interesting cases, see The Law
of Hypnotism, by Prof. R. S. Hyer, of the Southwestern University,
Georgetown, Texas, 1895.
As to myth-making and wonder-mongering, the general reader will find interesting supplementary accounts in the recent works of Andrew Lang and Baring-Gould.
A very curious evidence of the effects of the myth-making tendency has recently come to the attention of the writer of this article. Periodically, for many years past, we have seen, in books of travel and in the newspapers, accounts of the wonderful performances of the jugglers in India; of the stabbing of a child in a small basket in the midst of an arena, and the child appearing alive in the surrounding crowd; of seeds planted, sprouted, and becoming well-grown trees under the hand of the juggler; of ropes thrown into the air and sustained by invisible force. Count de Gubernatis, the eminent professor and Oriental scholar at Florence, informed the present writer that he had recently seen and studied these exhibitions, and that, so far from being wonderful, they were much inferior to the jugglery so well known in all our Western capitals.
Conscientious men still linger on who find comfort in holding fast to some shred of the old belief in diabolic possession. The sturdy declaration in the last century by John Wesley, that "giving up witchcraft is giving up the Bible," is echoed feebly in the latter half of this century by the eminent Catholic ecclesiastic in France who declares that "to deny possession by devils is to charge Jesus and his apostles with imposture," and asks, "How can the testimony of apostles, fathers of the Church, and saints who saw the possessed and so declared, be denied?" And a still fainter echo lingers in Protestant England.(411)
(411) See the Abbe Barthelemi, in the Dictionnaire de la Conversation;
also the Rev. W. Scott's Doctrine of Evil Spirits proved, London, 1853;
also the vigorous protest of Dean Burgon against the action of the New
Testament revisers, in substituting the word "epileptic" for "lunatic"
in Matthew xvii, 15, published in the Quarterly Review for January,
1882.
But, despite this conscientious opposition, science has in these latter days steadily wrought hand in hand with Christian charity in this field, to evolve a better future for humanity. The thoughtful physician and the devoted clergyman are now constantly seen working together; and it is not too much to expect that Satan, having been cast out of the insane asylums, will ere long disappear from monasteries and camp meetings, even in the most unenlightened regions of Christendom.