It is not unlikely that conditions of this kind frequently led to epidemics—if not of actual insanity, at least to hysteria—which not rarely developed in cities, nunneries, and monasteries; thus the epidemics in Erfurt in 1237, in the Rhine countries in 1374, and many others (see Hirsch).

It is rather remarkable that while such views and practises prevailed in the Christian Church, the followers of Mohammed not only held different views, but adopted a mode of treatment of the insane which laid the foundation of modern therapeutics in diseases of the mind. In the twelfth century, in Bagdad, a palace called the “Home of Mercy” was built, in which the insane were confined, examined every month, and released as soon as they had recovered. An asylum in Cairo was founded in 1304, while the first Christian asylum expressly for the mad is noted in 1409 (Lecky).

But science fought its way through the barriers of ignorance, misdirected zeal, and superstition. Altho there were physicians and “magicians,” who conformed to the views of the Church, the seed sown by the earlier schools of medicine slowly but surely began to put forth shoots, and the result was a tree of knowledge, the fruit of which may be observed in every modern insane asylum of the world, where the unfortunate sufferer is treated with kindness and skill, which, fortunately, often results in cure.

Scientific reason frequently rebelled against the “insane superstition,” at first mildly, but constantly increasing in strength, until an effectual protest was finally raised by John Weir, of Cleves, who was soon followed by Michel de Montaigne. And now a battle royal was waged between the adherents of theology and the disciples of the “resurrected” truth, and once more in the history of the world was demonstrated the correctness of the saying, that “truth crushed to earth shall rise again.” All over the world the warfare was carried, and at the end of the eighteenth century new champions arose—Jean Baptiste Pinel in France, and William Tuke in England. Their followers are legion, and in the book of life, in letters of gold, many a name has been written of those who trod in the footsteps of these pioneers. Theology no longer interferes in the treatment of the insane; in fact, it would be manifestly unjust not to mention that many Christian theologians subsequently joined in the noble work of lunacy reform, and aided progress greatly.

How great this progress in the treatment of the insane can best be appreciated by some of the older physicians in practise to-day. Who does not remember the chains, the strait-jacket, the dark locked cells of the insane asylum? These conditions existed not very many years ago, and altho the novels of Charles Reade are no doubt greatly exaggerated in regard to the conditions he portrayed in insane asylums, yet more than a grain of truth is probably contained in them. The books did much to bring about reforms in England and elsewhere.

Modern alienists have wrought wonders; their successful operations are not published in the daily press, but any visitor who knows what an insane asylum was fifty years ago, and who spends a few hours in a modern hospital for the treatment of lunatics, will observe what appears but little short of the miraculous. Imagine two thousand or more insane persons dining in a large hall, upon the table a tablecloth, and the insane using knife and fork in a decorous manner, and when the visitor is told that the “violent ward” is also present, and is asked to single these out from among the many, and fails (as he invariably does), the results attained by science, above all other measures, are strikingly apparent.

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Transcriber’s note