Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles. Daniel Hack Tuke

wonderful book of Burton's, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, who gave evidence before Hale, and what may be called the case-book of the celebrated Court physician, Sir Theodore de Mayerne. A Genevese, he settled in England in 1606, and was regarded as the highest authority in mental and nervous affections. A medical work of his was translated into Latin by Bonet. Mayerne's treatment was certainly of a somewhat cumbrous character, and his patients must have had an unusual and commendable amount of perseverance if they pursued it thoroughly. The drugs probably cured in part, at least, from the duty entailed upon the patients of collecting the numerous herbs which were ordered for the composition of the mixture, and Sir Theodore truly and naïvely remarks to one of his patients, "It will take some time before you have mixed your medicine." It is clear that he was under the influence of the old belief in the connection between the liver and insanity, and the paramount importance of getting rid of the black bile. Of one case he asserts that the root of all the griefs wherewith the patient has been afflicted is a melancholy humour, generated in the liver and wrought upon in the spleen. This humour is stated to be mixed in the veins, and so extended to the brain, which this offensive enemy of nature doth assault as an organical part. Hence, he says, it happens that the principal functions of the soul do act erroneously. His treatment consisted of emetics, purges, opening the veins under the tongue, blisters, issues, and shaving the head, followed by a cataplasm upon it, the backbone anointed with a very choice balsam of earthworms or bats. One prescription for melancholia contains no less than twenty-seven ingredients, to be made into a decoction, to which is to be added that sine quâ non, the ever precious hellebore. Other remedies were prescribed; in some cases the "bezoartick pastills," composed of an immense number of ingredients, including the skull of a stag and of a healthy man who had been executed. The commentary triumphantly made by this lover of polypharmacy in the case in which this medicine was administered, runs thus:—"These things being exactly performed, this noble gentleman was cured." With certain modifications, the general treatment here indicated was that in fashion at the period to which I refer, and was based on a strong conviction of the presence of certain peccant humours in the body, affecting the brain, which required elimination.

Mayerne, of whom there is a portrait in the College of Physicians, was physician to more crowned heads than has fallen to the lot of probably any other doctor, namely, Henry IV. of France, James I. of England, his queen, Anne of Denmark, Charles I., and Charles II. He introduced calomel into practice. Dying in 1654/5, he was buried in the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, where a monument was erected to his memory.[46]

The royal author of the book on Demonology (first published in 1597)—the high and mighty Prince James—gives sundry learned reasons why witches are not to be regarded as mad, and why, therefore, the plea of insanity should be rejected in the legal tribunals. Written in the form of a dialogue between Philomathes and Epistemon, the latter, who personates the king, says, "As to your second reason (that Witchcraft is but very melancholique imagination of simple raving creatures), grounded upon Physicke, in attributing the confessions or apprehensions of Witches to a natural melancholique humour, any one that pleased physikally to consider upon the natural humour of Melancholy, according to all the physicians that ever writ thereupon, shall find that that will be over short a cloake to cover their knavery with."[47]

      

James is very wroth with Reginald Scot and Wierus[48] for their opposition to the prevalent belief, and urges, as proof of the existence of witches ("which have never fallen out so clear in any age or nation"), daily experience and their confessions. Reginald Scot had dared to write, in his "Discovery of Witchcraft" (1584): "Alas, I am sorry and ashamed to see how many die who being said to be bewitched, only seek for magical cures, whom wholesome diet and good medicines would have recovered.... These affections tho' they appear in the mind of man, yet are they bred in the body and proceed from the humour which is the very dregs of the blood; nourishing those places from whence proceed fear, cogitations, superstitions, fastings, labours, and such like."

      It is striking to observe how much more enlightened this writer was than a physician to whom I have already referred, Sir Thomas Browne. His famous sentence, in which he gives full credence to witches, makes us obliged to admit that when so distinguished a man entertained such superstitious notions, we cannot be much surprised if contemporary judges regarded many of the really insane as witches, although they had before them the enlightened opinions of Reginald Scot.

      

      The history of incubi, or "night-comers," is doubtless, to a large extent, a narrative of the hallucinations, delusions, and automatic thoughts of the insane, although to what extent would be a difficult question to determine, because some were assuredly frightened into the confessions which they made; and, further, it is hard to say how much of a certain belief was due to the current popular ignorance and credulity, and how much to actual mental disease. Still the ignorant opinions of an age find their nisus and most rapid development in persons of weak or diseased mind, and they form the particular delusion manifested; and at a period when witches are universally believed in, there must be some reason why one believes he or she has had transactions with Satan, and another does not believe it. It is, indeed, impossible to read the narratives of some of the unfortunate hags who were put to death for witchcraft, without recognizing the well-marked features of the victims of cerebral disorder. In this way I have no doubt a considerable number of mad people were destroyed. Their very appearance suggested to their neighbours the notion of something weird and impish; the physiognomy of madness was mistaken for that of witchcraft, while the poor wretches themselves, conscious of unaccustomed sensations and singular promptings, referred them to the agency of demons. Strangely enough, even an inquisitor—Nider, who died in 1440—gives many instances of persons whose symptoms he himself recognized as those not of possession, but of madness.

It is hardly necessary to say that the treatment of the unfortunate lunatics and epileptics who were judged to be witches by James I. was nothing else than death, and he thus coolly comments on this punishment: "It is commonly used by fire, but that is an indifferent thing, to be used in every country, according to the law or custom thereof."[49]

I cannot pass from this subject without doing honour to two men who abroad, no less than Reginald Scot in Britain, opposed the immolation of lunatics—Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who wrote a remarkable work in 1567, and appealed to the princes of Europe to cease shedding innocent blood; and Cornelius Agrippa,[50] who interfered in the trial of a so-called witch in Brabant, having sore contention with an inquisitor, who through unjust accusations drew a poor woman into his butchery, not so much to examine as to torment her. When Agrippa undertook to defend her, alleging there was no proof of sorcery, the inquisitor replied, "One thing there is which is proof and matter sufficient; for her mother was in times past burnt for a witch." When Agrippa retorted that this had reference to another person, and therefore ought not to be admitted by the judge, the inquisitor was equal to the occasion, and replied that witchcraft was naturally engrafted into this child, because the parents used to sacrifice their children to the devil as soon as they were born. On this Agrippa boldly exclaimed, "Oh, thou wicked priest, is this thy divinity? Dost thou use to draw poor guiltless women to the rack by these forged devices? Dost thou with such sentences judge others to be heretics, thou being a greater heretic than either Faustus or Donatus?" The natural consequence was that the inquisitor then threatened to proceed against the advocate himself as a supporter of witches; nevertheless, he continued his defence of the unhappy woman, who, whether a lunatic or not, was delivered, we read, by him "from the claws of the bloody monk, who, with her accuser, was condemned in a great sum of money, and remained infamous after that time to almost all men."

      Scot, who cites this case, shows great familiarity with examples of melancholy and delusion, and from his work have been derived many of the best known illustrations of the latter, including the delusions of being monarchs, brute beasts, and earthen pots greatly