In England, in 1820, one of the great sights of London was Bedlam. The keepers were allowed to add to their income by exhibiting the patients at one penny or twopence per head.
Doubtless the chief reason of the neglect and cruelty to which lunatics were thus subjected in Christian Europe, so long fruitful in all other works of mercy, was the theory of possession by an evil spirit; conjurations and exorcisms were considered the only safe and efficacious methods of expelling the demons. This grievous blunder is one of many illustrations which might be given of the necessity of making an accurate diagnosis before attempting to treat disease. Dr. Baas says[1042] that lunatic asylums were established first at Feltre in Italy. The next were those of Seville, established in 1409; Padua, 1410; Saragossa, 1425; Toledo, 1483; Fez, 1492.
Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, thus describes Lycanthropy, “which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves or some such beasts. Ætius (lib. 6, cap. 11) and Paulus (lib. 3, cap. 16) call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it, whether there be any such disease. Donat. ab Altomari (cap. 9, Art. Med.) saith, that he saw two of them in his time. Wierus (De Præstiv. Demonum, l. 3, cap. 21) tells a story of such a one at Padua, 1541, that would not believe to the contrary but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard who thought himself a bear. Forestus (Observat. lib. 10, de Morbis Cerebri, c. 15) confirms as much by many examples; one among the rest, of which he was an eye-witness, at Alcmaer, in Holland. A poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look. Such belike, or little better, were King Prœtus’ daughters (Hippocrates, lib. de insaniâ), that thought themselves kine; and Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness. This disease, perhaps, gave occasion to that bold assertion of Pliny (lib. 8, cap. 22, homines interdum lupos fieri; et contra), some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men again: and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape; to Ovid’s (Met. lib. 1) tale of Lycaon, etc. He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his eighteenth book, de Civitate Dei, cap. 5,” etc., etc.
CHAPTER III.
THE GERM THEORY OF DISEASE.
The Disease-Demon reappears as a Germ.—Phagocytes.—Ptomaines.—Lister’s Antiseptic Surgery.—Sanitary Science or Hygiene.—Bacteriologists.—Faith Cures.—Experimental Physiology and the Latest System of Medicine.
Soon after the discovery of the microscope, men began to seek for the causes of diseases in the infinitely little. Athanasius Kircher (1598-1680), a Jesuit priest of Fulda, seems to have been gifted with the ability to foresee three of our greatest modern scientific discoveries. He anticipated Darwin’s dictum that life is maintained by struggle and counter-struggle. He described hypnotism in certain animals, and detected, as he thought, micro-organisms with the microscope, then in its infancy, in the blood and pus of patients suffering with the plague and other infectious diseases, which “worms,” as he termed the corpuscles, he considered to be the cause of the disease. His instrument had enabled him to discover that all decomposing substances swarmed with low forms of life. His theory, however, gained little credence at the time.[1043] Next Antony van Leeuwenhoek, “the father of microscopy,” in 1675 published his researches in a series of letters to the Royal Society, in which he described minute organisms in waters, vegetable infusions, saliva, and in scrapings from the teeth, and he was able to differentiate these special forms of life. Some of his descriptions are so graphic that microscopists can almost recognise these forms as bacteria with which we are now familiar. Physicians still designating these as “worms” began to attribute to their influence various diseases.
In 1701 Nicholas Andry wrote on this subject a treatise entitled De la Génération des Vers dans le Corps de l’Homme. The germ theory of putrefaction and fermentation originated with Andry; he maintained that air, water, vinegar, fermenting wine, old beer, and sour milk contained myriads of germs; he detected these in the blood and pustules of small-pox, and believed that they could be found in other maladies. His views met with general acceptance, and curiously enough it was believed—and has since been verified by our own observation—that mercurial preparations were fatal to such disease germs.[1044] Lancisi in 1718 attributed the unhealthy effects of malarial air to animalcules, and “inconceivable worms” met with as much ridicule in Paris in 1726 as the “microbe” has been received with to-day. Linnæus out of all this chaos thought order might possibly be evolved; he believed that the actual contagion of certain eruptive diseases might be discovered in these small living beings.
Marcus Antonius Plenciz in 1762 discussed the relation of animalcules to putrefaction and disease in his works.[1045]
Notwithstanding all these clear indications, which, if followed up, would have been fertile in result, the germ theory of disease fell almost into oblivion. Otto Müller in 1786 began a more systematic study of the life history of various micro-organisms, and thus advanced the science of minute forms of life. The question arose, How do these forms originate? Dr. Needham was the first to suggest the theory of their spontaneous generation. Bonnet, of Geneva, disputed the results of Dr. Needham’s experiments, and Spallanzani demonstrated by experiment the correctness of Bonnet’s criticism.