[1]
[Footnote 1: Dialogicall Discourses, by Deacon and Walker, 3rd
Dialogue.]
61. But, as in all other cases, the refinements of the theologians had
little or no effect upon the world outside their controversies. To the
ordinary mind, if a man's eyes goggled, body swelled, and mouth foamed,
and it was admitted that these were the work of a devil, the question
whether the evil-doer were actually housed within the sufferer, or only
hovered in his immediate neighbourhood, seemed a question of such minor
importance as to be hardly worth discussing--a conclusion that the lay
mind is apt to come to upon other questions that appear portentous to
the divines--and the theory of possession, having the advantage in time
over that of obsession, was hard to dislodge.
62. One of the chief causes of the persistency with which the old belief
was maintained was the utter ignorance of the medical men of the period
on the subject of mental disease. The doctors of the time were mere
children in knowledge of the science they professed; and to attribute a
disease, the symptoms of which they could not comprehend, to a power
outside their control by ordinary methods, was a safe method of
screening a reputation which might otherwise have suffered. "Canst thou
not minister to a mind diseased?" cries Macbeth to the doctor, in one of
those moments of yearning after the better life he regrets, but cannot
return to, which come over him now and again.
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