No; the disease is beyond
his practice; and, although this passage has in it a deeper meaning than
the one attributed to it here, it well illustrates the position of the
medical man in such cases. Most doctors of the time were mere empirics;
dabbled more or less in alchemy; and, in the treatment of mental
disease, were little better than children. They had for co-practitioners
all who, by their credit with the populace for superior wisdom, found
themselves in a position to engage in a profitable employment. Priests,
preachers, schoolmasters--Dr. Pinches and Sir Topazes--became so
commonly exorcists, that the Church found it necessary to forbid the
casting out of spirits without a special license for that purpose.[1]
But as the Reformers only combated the doctrine of possession upon
strictly theological grounds, and did not go on to suggest any
substitute for the time-honoured practice of exorcism as a means for
getting rid of the admittedly obnoxious result of diabolic interference,
it is not altogether surprising that the method of treatment did not
immediately change.
[Footnote 1: 72nd Canon.]
63. Upon this subject a book called "Tryal of Witchcraft," by John
Cotta, "Doctor in Physike," published in 1616, is extremely instructive.
The writer is evidently in advance of his time in his opinions upon the
principal subject with which he professes to deal, and weighs the
evidence for and against the reality of witchcraft with extreme
precision and fairness.
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