After the theosophists, theurgists, and the priests, we will now
interrogate the writings of the physicians of antiquity and of the
Middle Ages, as to this question of spirits and their connection with
the affairs of mankind.
We see that Galen is often drawn away by the beliefs of his time, to
the most ridiculous prejudices and fancies, and that he is the defender
of magical conjurations. He claimed that Æsculapius appeared to him one
day in a dream and advised bleeding in the treatment of pleurisy by
which he was attacked.
After Galen, Soranus of Ephesus used magical chants for curing certain
affections. Scribonius Largus, a contemporary of the Emperor Claudius,
indicated the manner of gathering plants, so that they might possess
the strongest healing properties (the left hand must be raised to
the Moon). Plants thus gathered cured even serpent bites. Archigenes
suspended amulets on the necks of his patients. And although Pliny
often declared that he wished “to examine everything in nature and
not to speculate on occult causes” he reproduces in his works all the
superstitious practices employed in medicine.
In the sixth century, Ætius, physician to the Court of Constantinople,
acquired great surgical renown by the preparation of applications of
pomades, ointments, and other topical remedies, in which superstition
played a leading _role_.[56] Thus, in making a certain salve it was
necessary to repeat several times in a low voice, “May the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob accord efficacy to this medicine.” If one had
a foreign body in the throat it was necessary to touch the neck of the
patient and say, “As Jesus Christ raised Lazarus, and Jonah came out
of a whale, come out thou bone”; or, better still, “The Martyr Blase
and the Servant of Christ commands thee to come out of the throat or
descend to the stomach.”[57]
After Ætius, we see Alexander of Tralles indulge in the same follies.
In the colic he bids us use a stone on which is represented Hercules
seated on a lion, a ring of iron on which was inscribed a Greek
sentence, and, on the other, the diagram of the Gnostics (a figure
composed of two equilateral triangles); and he adds that sacred things
must not be profaned.
Against the gout, the same Alexander of Tralles recommended a verse
from Homer, or, better still, to engrave on a leaf of gold the words
_mei_, _dreu_, _mor_, _phor_, _teus_, _za_, _zown_. He conjured, by the
words _Iao_, _Sabaoth_, _Adonai_, _Eloi_, a plant he employed in the
same disease. In quotidian fever he advised an amulet made of an olive
leaf on which was written in ink, _Ka Poi. A._[58]
In the thirteenth century, Hugo de Lucques said a _Pater noster_ and
other prayers to the Trinity to cure fractures of the limbs. But
in the following century astrology replaced the magic of religious
superstition. Arnauld de Villeneuve attributed to each hour of the
day a particular virtue which influenced, according to the influence
of the horoscope, the different parts of the body. According to
Arnauld, we can use bleeding only on certain days when such and such
a constellation is in place, and no other time; but the position of
the moon more particularly needed attention. The most favorable time
for phlebotomy was when Luna was found in the sign of Cancer; but the
conjunction of the latter with Saturn is injurious to the effects of
medicines, and especially of purgatives.[59]
His contemporary, Bernard de Gordon (of Montpellier), gives as a sure
method of hastening difficult accouchments the reading of passages from
the Psalms of David. He explains the humors of certain hours of the day
in the following manner: the blood in the morning moves towards the
sun, with which it is in harmony; but it falls towards evening, because
the greatest amount of sanguification occurs during sleep. In the third
hour of the day the bile runs downwards, to the end that it may not
make the blood acid;[60] the black bile moves at the ninth hour and the
mucus towards evening.
The efficacy of precious stones for bewitching, and many other
superstitious ideas, were likewise noted by medical authors, notably
Italian writers, as, for instance, Michel Savonarola, Professor at
Ferrara, one of the most celebrated physicians of his age. In Germany,
Agrippa of Nettesheim, philosopher, alchemist and physician, had a
predilection for magic and the occult sciences, if we are to judge from
his works published in 1530 and 1531, _i.e._, _De incertitudianæ et
vanitate scientiarum_, _De occulta philosophia_, in which he mentions
action induced at a distance and forsees the discovery of magnetism.
Like him, his contemporaries, Raymond Lulle, in Spain, and J. Reuchlin,
published books on the Cabala (_Kabbala_), and, in Italy, Porta
founded, at Naples, the _Academy of Secrets_, for the development
of occult sciences, which are explained in his treatise _De Magia
Naturali_.
At almost the same epoch, Paracelsus, Professor at Basle, claimed that
he possessed the universal panacea; that he had found the secret of
prolonging life, by magic and astrology, for he diagnosed diseases
through the influence of the stars. After him, Van Helmont defended
animal magnetism, and gave himself up to the study of occult science,
in company with his student, Rodolphe Goclenius.
In the sixteenth century, Fernel, who, inasmuch as he was a
mathematician and an astronomer, published his _Cosmotheria_, where he
indicated the means of measuring a meridian degree with exactitude; his
remarkable works on physiology (_De naturali parte medicinæ_, 1542),
on pathology and therapeutics, which gave him the nickname of the
French Galen. Fernel fully admitted the action of evil spirits on the
body of man; he believed that adorers of the Demons could, by the aid
of imprecations, enchantments, invocations and talismans, draw fallen
angels into the bodies of their enemies, and that these Demons could
then cause serious sickness. He compared the _possessed_ to maniacs,
but that the former had the gift of reading the past and divining the
most secret matters. He affirmed that he had been witness of a case of
delirium caused by the presence of the Devil in a patient, that which
was denied by several doctors at the epoch.[61] He also believed in
lycanthropy.... In the same century, another of our medical glories,
Ambroise Pare, the Father of French surgery, also adopted the theory
of the Inquisitors regarding sorcery in his works,[62] in which may
be found his remarkable anatomical and surgical discoveries. We read
the following quaintly conceived passage: “Demons can suddenly change
themselves into any form they wish; one often sees them transformed
into serpents, frogs, bats, crows, goats, mules, dogs, cats, wolves,
and bulls; they can be transmuted into men as well as into angels
of light; they howl in the night and make infernal noises as though
dragging chains, _they move chairs and tables_, rock cradles, turn the
leaves of books, count money, throw down buckets, etc., etc. They are
known by many names, such as cacodemons, incubi, succubi, coquemares,
witches, hobgoblins, goblins, bad angels, Satan, Lucifer, etc.
“The actions of Satan are supernatural and incomprehensible, passing
human understanding, and we can no more understand them than we can
comprehend why the loadstone attracts the needle. Those who are
possessed by demons can speak with the tongue drawn out of their mouth,
through the belly and by other natural parts; they speak unknown
languages, cause earthquakes, make thunder, clear up the weather, drag
up trees by the roots, move a mountain from one place to another, raise
castles in the air and put them back in their places without injury,
and can fascinate and dazzle the human eye.
“_Incubi_ are demons in the disguise of men, who copulate with female
sorcerers; _succubi_ are demons disguised as women, who practice vile
habits not only on sleeping, but wakeful men.”
“Ambroise Pare,” says Calmeil, “believed that demons _hoarded up
all kinds of foreign bodies in their victims’ persons_, such as
old netting, bones, horse-shoes, nails, horsehair, pieces of wood,
serpents, and other curious odds and ends, and cites the wellknown case
of Ulrich Neussersser.”
The celebrated surgeon concludes from this that “it was the Devil
who made the iron blades and other articles found in the stomach and
intestines of the unfortunate Ulrich.”
What would Pare have thought had he seen the strange objects so
commonly found by modern surgeons in ovarian cysts? How many demons
would it take to produce the numerous objects noticed at the present
day?
Happily these demonological physicians accepted purely and simply the
suggestion that demons could act on men, and abandoned the victims to
the tender mercy of the theologians and their tools the lawyers. Yet,
even in this time of atrocities there were a few courageous physicians
who struggled for humanity as against ecclesiastical despotism. Let us
quote, according to Calmeil, one Francoise Ponzinibus, who destroyed
one by one all the arguments that served to support the criminal code
against demons. It was this brave doctor who dared to write that
demonidolatry constituted a true disease; that all the sensations
leading the ignorant to believe in _spirits_ who adored the Devil were
due to a depraved moral and physical condition; that it was false that
certain persons could isolate their souls from their bodies at night
and thus leave their homes for far off places inhabited by demons;
that the accouplement of sorcerers and all the crimes attributed to
them could not be logically supposed but must be legally proven; that
it was cruel and atrocious to burn demented people at the stake for
witchcraft.
Let us also quote from Andre Alciat, another courageous physician, who
dared accuse an Inquisitor of murdering a multitude of insane people on
the plea of witchcraft. He considered the vigil (_sabbat_) of sorcerers
as an absurd fiction, and saw in so-called _possessed_ only so many
poor demented women given over to fanatical delusions and wild dreams.
Paul Zacchias, the author of “Medico-Legal Questions” (_Questiones
Medico-legales_), a work in which he shows himself to be as wise
an alienist as Doctor of Laws. The avowed and open enemy of
supernaturalism, he boldly denounced the cruelties committed against
the demented.
Let us finally inscribe on the roll of honor, with our respects, the
name of Jean Wier,[63] or rather of Joannes Wierus, physician to the
Duke of Cleves, who studied in Paris, where he received the degree
of doctor, and was afterwards the disciple of Cornelius Agrippa,
a partisan of demonology. Like the latter, Jean Weir believed in
astrology, alchemy, the cabala, sorcerers and female mediums; likewise
in demons who possessed control of human beings through magic power.
But in his works that he published in 1560 he proclaims the innocence
of those unfortunates punished for witchcraft, and declares them to
have been insane and melancholic; likewise asserting that they could
have been cured by proper treatment. He declares that he is fully
persuaded that sorcerers, witches, and lycanthropic patients who were
burned at the stake were crazy people whose reason had been overthrown;
and that the faults imputed to these unfortunates were dangerous to
none but themselves; that the possessed were dupes to false sensations
that had been experienced during the time of their ecstatic transports
or in their sleep.
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.