Weir[64] insisted that the homicidal monomania attributed to the inhabitants of Vaud should not be credited, and was not except by fools and fanatics; while the so-called vampires, whose blood was shed on the banks of Lake Leman, the borders of the Rhine, and on the mountains of Savoy, had never been guilty of crimes, nor murders especially, and cites cases of condemnation where the insanity or imbecility of the victims was incontestible. He declares, in general, that all sorcerers are irresponsible, that they are insane, and that the devils possessing them can be combatted without exorcism. “Above all,” says he to the judges and executioners, “do not kill, do not torture. Have you fear that these poor frightened women have not suffered enough already? Think you they can have more misery than that they already suffer? Ah! my friends, even though they merited punishment, rest assured of one thing, that their disease is enough.” Beautiful words, worthy of a grand philosopher. Born in the sixteenth century, he believed in magic and sorcery; but as a physician he pleaded for the saving of human life, and as a man he frowned down the crimes committed on the scaffold. “The duty of the monk,” says he, “is to study how to cure the soul rather than to destroy it.” Alas! he preached his doctrine in the barren desert of ecclesiastical fanaticism.
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.
Many of those who had preceded these writers had been learned men and remarkable physicians, to whom anatomy, clinical medicine and surgery owed important discoveries, but the majority of these were not brave enough to defend their intelligence against religious superstitions. In some instances, indeed, they were even the criminal accessories of the theologians and inquisitors. In acting in adhesion to Demonological ideas, their very silence on grand psychological questions evidences their weakness,—we are sorry to say this,—and lowers them from the high position of humanitarians; the masses of the people of the Middle Ages owed the majority of their medical savants nothing on the score of liberty of conscience.
THE BEWITCHED, POSSESSED, SORCERERS AND DEMONOMANIACS.
In order to fully comprehend the Demonomania of the Middle Ages, it is necessary to previously analyze the different elements composing the medical constitution of the epoch, and, investigate under what morbid influences such strange neuroses were produced.
These influences, we shall find from thence, in the state of intellectual and moral depression provoked by the successive pestilential epidemics, which, from the sixth century decimated the population of Western Europe; in the disposition of the human mind towards supernaturalism, which had invaded all classes of society; in the terrors excited by the tortures of an ever flaming and eternal hell; in the fright, caused by the cruel and atrocious decisions of brutal Inquisitors, and their fanatical tools, the officers of the law. We find too, that a frightful condition of misery had weakened the inhabitants of city and country, morally and physically, inducing a multitude of women to openly enter into prostitution for protection and nutrition, owing to the iniquity of a despotic regime; then too, there were added bad conditions of hygiene and moral decadence, so that intelligence was sapped and undermined, together with a breaking down of the vitality of the organism.
In the recital of the miseries of the Middle Age, made by a master hand, by an illustrious historian, who bases his assertions on antique chronicles whose veracity cannot be questioned, we read the following: “Society was impressed with a profound sentiment of sadness, it was as though a pall of grief covered the generation; the whole world given over to plagues; the invasion by barbarians; horrible diseases; terrible famines decimating the masses by starvation; violent wind storms; greyish skies with foggy days; the darkness of night casting its shroud everywhere; a cry of lamentation ascends to Heaven through all this gruesome period. That sombre witness, our contemporary Glaber, fully indicates the position of society devoured by war, famine and the plague. It was thought that the order of seasons and the laws of the elements, that up to that period governed the world, had fallen back into the original chaos. It was thought that the end of the human race had arrived.”[65]
When the epidemic of Demonomania attacked the earth, at the end of the fifteenth century, more than ten generations had undergone the depressive action of the superstitions and false ideas spread broadcast by religion. Heredity had prepared the earth, the human mind being in an absolute condition of receptivity for all pathological actions. The education of children was confined to teaching them foolish doctrines, diabolical legends, mysterious practices that weakened their judgments. With the progression, from childhood to majority, a vague sentiment of uneasiness was experienced with a constant preoccupation on the subject of conscience and sin. In full adult age, as we have observed, came religious monomania, with acute sexual excitement, and persistent erotic ideas.
Arriving at this phase of the situation, some became theomaniacs, others demonomaniacs, saying they were possessed by sorcery, under the influence of genesic and other senses, with psychal hallucinations, and in some cases, psycho-sensorial illusions. These fictitious perception were produced either through the influence of the mind, assailed by supernatural conceptions, or by morbid impressions transmitted most often by the great sympathetic, or, finally, by an unknown action arising from the exterior.
Under the influence of these hallucinations, which manifested themselves in a state of somnambulism, or during physiological sleep, the recollection persisting to the after awakening, the Demonomaniac responded to those asking questions, that he had heard the confused noises made by the sorcerers at their vigil, had heard also the conversation of the devils, and had seen scenes of the wildest prostitution enacted by the demons; that fantastic animals were perceived; that strange odors of a diabolical nature, the savor of rotten meat, and corrupt human flesh, tainted blood of new born babes, and other noisome things had been smelled; that these effluvias were horrible, repulsive, nauseating, combined with the stink of sorcerers and the sulphurous vapors of magical perfumes; that he felt himself touched by supernatural beings who had the lightness of smoke or mist, and wafted away in the air. The hallucinations of the genital senses had led him to believe he had carnal connection, always of a painful nature, with succubi. When the victim to these delusions was a woman, she had the impression of having been brutally violated or deflowered, and some women declared they oftentimes experienced the voluptuous sensations of an amorous coition.