PTER III

THE PROPHETS MOHAMMED, JESUS, AND MOSES CHARLATANS OR VICTIMS OF MENTAL
AND PHYSICAL DISEASE

_The prophet or seer is a man of strong imaginative powers, which
have not been calmed by education. The ideas which occur to his mind
often present themselves to his eyes and ears in corresponding
sights and sounds.... Prophets have existed in all countries and at
all times; but the gift becomes rare in the same proportion as
people learn to read and write_.

WINWOOD READE.

Religious apologists are forever reminding us that we must interpret
both the lives and the works of their prophets and recorders in the
spirit and meaning of the ages in which they lived. To this I agree; but
the apologists have so mutilated the meaning of the words of the seers
and built about them such a mass of nonsense, myth, and fable that it
becomes nearly impossible after the lapse of centuries to differentiate
the actual man from the fabled man. But there are certain facts that do
come down to us recorded by disinterested observers from which can be
derived finally some conception of their mode of life, and the content
and significance of their teachings.

Although time causes great changes in customs and manners, it only
effects a negligible variation in the vast majority of diseases which
affect the body and mind of man. We know from the examination of the
skeletal remains of prehistoric man that the diseases of the bone of
thousands of years ago were similar in their manifestations to those
same diseases of bone of today. From the writings of the early Egyptian,
Greek, and Roman physicians we identify diseases by their symptoms, and
recognize that the symptoms of these diseases have not changed
throughout the ages. Therefore, with the knowledge of the signs and
symptoms of various diseases which we have today, we can safely assert
that if an ancient complained of the same group of signs and symptoms
(which is now termed a "disease complex"), he was suffering from the
same disease which we can identify in modern man.

What applies to physical disease is just as applicable to mental
disease. In speaking of mental disease, it is important for the layman
to keep in mind a few fundamental principles held by the physician. The
physician in speaking of mental disease means a more or less permanent
departure from the normal or usual way of thinking, acting, or feeling.
In the examination of a patient with