![]() ![]() The populace attributed all these terrible catastrophes to supernatural causes and sought to root out the spirit of Satan which had invaded the land. They flogged, starved, chained, and branded them mercilessly, adding physical suffering to their mental anguish until their condition became so hopeless that they pleaded with God to release them through death.The era came to a tragic climax in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, partly as a result of the doctrine of demoniacal possession and partly as a reaction to the ravages of a series of storms, pestilences, floods, and especially the Black Death, which destroyed millions of lives and disrupted the entire fabric of society. They therefore used every conceivable torture to make the bodies of “madmen” so uninhabitable that not even a demon would want to reside in them. The theologians of the time came to believe that demons could be driven out only by administering physical punishment. ![]() The two major forms of this “mass madness,” dancing mania and lycanthropy, are described under another topic, MASS HYSTERIA.Unfortunately those who “treated” the mentally disturbed did not limit themselves to verbal attacks on the devil. A striking example of the suggestibility of the age can be found in the “psychic epidemics” which took place from about the tenth century on. Treatment of this kind was apparently successful in many cases, probably because the patients were highly suggestible and believed so implicitly in demonology that they gave up their most obvious symptoms. May God hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of Saul” (From Thesaurus Exorcismorum). May God set a nail to your skull, and pound it in with a hammer, as Jael did unto Sisera!. Believing that it was Satan’s pride which originally led to his downfall, they tried to strike back by hurling at him the foulest epithets and most obscene curses they could devise: “May all the devils that are thy foes rush forth upon thee, and drag thee down to hell!. The priests became convinced that incantations and laying on of hands were not powerful enough to exorcise the devil. ![]() Pound these together, add ale and holy water.” And here is one of the incantations that recalls Hippocrates’ theory of hysteria: “I conjure thee, oh womb, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to come back to the place from which thou shouldst neither move nor turn away without further molestation, and to return, without anger, to the place where the Lord has put thee originally.”These relatively mild procedures were gradually replaced by more and more violent measures. For example, one of the unpalatable prescriptions read: “For a fiend-sick man: when the devil possesses a man or controls him from within with disease, a spew-drink of lupin, bishops- wort, henbane, garlic. In some monasteries and shrines the priests sought to exorcise the demons by the gentle “laying on of hands.” These procedures were often mingled with crude naturalistic ideas derived from Galen and Hippocrates. Generally speaking, they were handled in a kindly manner, and treatment consisted of prayers, holy water, sanctified ointments, the breath or spittle of priests, touching of relics, and visits to holy places. The mind of man was pictured as a theater of war in which invisible spirits fought to gain possession of the soul, and treatment of the mentally ill was once again put in the hands of priests instead of physicians.During the early part of the medieval period victims of mental disorder were usually confined in monasteries. Demonol- ogy, which had been rife in primitive society, reappeared in full force, modified only slightly to conform with the theology of the time. Abnormal behavior was divorced from medicine and associated once again with the supernatural and the magical. The scientific approach to mental disorder which Galen had advocated at the end of the second century had gradually been abandoned, and physicians had returned to the primitive superstitions which had dominated man’s mind before the classical era. Even before Greek and Roman civilization collapsed under the impact of the barbarian onslaught in the fifth century, the Dark Ages in psychiatric history had already begun.
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