The characteristics of the disease have been mentioned fully because they seem to have some bearing on certain Biblical episodes.
Sometimes, in the case of bouda, recourse is had to a very simple and direct method of cure. Parkyns wrote:—“Many instances have been related to me, wherein the friends of the possessed, having procured charms of sufficient power to force the spirit to declare his name and residence, but not equal to turning him out, went at once to the place indicated, and, seizing on the blacksmith, brought him forcibly to their home, where, having fed him well, he was commanded to quit his victim, and at the same time his life was threatened, lances being pointed at his breast.”[250] It is not stated whether this procedure is effective.
Mr. Wylde dismissed the demon lightly:—“The bouda, or evil spirit, that attacks some of the young women, nearly always ugly virgins or hysterical and plain-looking girls that men will never notice, is to my mind the greatest fraud of all their superstitions. Every one has written about it, and I am afraid that they have drawn a good deal on their imagination, and the missionaries who have visited the country have, perhaps, been quite as bigoted as the people they have tried to describe. I believe that these peculiar fits which the women have, when they do all sorts of filthy things, are nothing more than hysteria; many women even in civilized countries are not responsible for their actions when suffering from these complaints, and people who are inclined to believe in the miraculous take for granted what the ignorant peasantry say. I have seen several young women suffering from the ‘bouda’ and a bucket of cold water that I have thrown over them, and a good smacking from my servant, has soon sent the devil away, and the only after effect has been that they have been sulky, because they were not made much of.”[251]
Parkyns was not a missionary, and he was a shrewd and levelheaded observer. His comments are to the point:—“To many of my readers it will doubtless appear, and very naturally, that all these symptoms are impostures resorted to by the pretended sufferers as a means of procuring the borrowed finery, and enjoying the gaieties and festivities which are considered as the means of curing the disorder. This sounds very probable; and I cannot deny that such is my own opinion, though there are still some points which have rather puzzled me. First, as in the bouda, the extraordinary talent for acting which they display, and then the fact that the imposture has not been discovered and published centuries ago, but that it is still believed by the very people among whom it has so long been and still daily continues to be practised. How is it possible that a woman, who in her youthful days may have been guilty of such a hoax, should suffer herself to be imposed upon and led into so much trouble and expense by her children afterwards? And yet this is of common occurrence. From this last remark let it not be supposed that young women are the only sufferers; men and women of all ages are liable, though the young of the fair sex are perhaps the most frequently possessed.
“One of my servants, who, by the great anxiety he showed in watching and tending the patients, was evidently convinced of the truth of their sufferings, had himself been attacked many years before, and assured me that after his recovery he had not the slightest recollection of anything that had taken place while the fit was on him, but that his friends had told him all about it. How was it possible that this man, supposing his own illness to have been feigned, could be cheated by the same means?
“Lastly, the most puzzling thing of all is when a person acts sickness to such perfection that Azrael himself is deceived, and, mistaking the feigned malady for a real one, finishes it by seriously taking away the life of the shammer.
“The following case will illustrate what I mean. I had a servant named Bairou, a youth of about nineteen, who, from having been several years in the service of Europeans, had acquired a few of their notions; and, among others, had learnt to ridicule the superstitions of his countrymen. He had a sister who had been ill for several months, and no one knew what her complaint was. At his request I went to visit her more than once, but was unable to do anything for her. The fact is, my doctoring is on a very limited scale; and, as even the most eminent physicians agree that the greatest difficulty is to ascertain what is really the matter with the patient, I stood very little chance with Bairou’s sister, who complained of nothing, and showed no marked signs of ailing except in entire prostration of strength, and a rapid falling off of flesh. She gradually got worse, till one day her brother came to me and requested me to lend him my ornaments, and also to beg some more from my friends at the camp. I asked whether he was going to be ‘arkee’ to some friend about to marry; but he answered with a melancholy smile that he wanted them for his sister; as, having tried everything else, their friends had proposed to see if she were possessed, and he, though not believing in such nonsense, was willing to allow them to try the experiment, lest, if anything happened to her, they should upbraid him afterwards for having caused her death by his obstinacy and incredulity.
“I, of course, quite approved of his determination, and easily succeeded in obtaining the articles required of me. She was dressed up in the borrowed finery as she lay on the couch; and at a signal the musicians outside commenced playing. At the first notes her eyes began to brighten, and, raising herself up for the first time during many days, she swayed her body to and fro for a few moments, after the manner of one possessed; but, becoming quickly exhausted, she sank back, saying, with a faint smile, ‘It is too late now!’ She repeated these words twice; they were the last I ever heard her utter. Three hours after she was a corpse. Was this, too, a sham? Or what may it be called? Possibly some freak of her disordered imagination.”[252]
Stern had the tendency to moralize which prevailed at the time when he wrote, but there can be little doubt that he offered a sound opinion in the following passage:—“In bringing this demoniacal subject to a close, I am forcibly reminded of the words, ‘Be sure your sin will find you out.’ That there is something in these diseases and in their mode of cure which transcends ordinary disorders no one who has stood beside a frantic and agonized patient and wondered at the sudden and more than dramatic transition from raving frenzy to childlike docility can well deny; but without deciding whether it is epilepsy, catalepsy, or hysteria, I am quite sure that fiends and spirits have less to do with the matter than the irregular life and dissolute course which so many pursue.”[253]
It would, indeed, be a matter for astonishment if marked nervous affections did not occur in a country where, among the people of both sexes, unwholesome diet and parasitical irritation so often combine their results with those of sensual habits of body and mind acquired early in life.