Christ, chap. xvii. For this idea
in Greece and elsewhere, see Maury, La Magie, etc., vol. iii, p. 276,
giving, among other citations, one from book v of the Odyssey. On the
influence of Platonism, see Esquirol and others, as above--the main
passage cited is from the Phaedo. For the devotion of the early fathers
and doctors to this idea, see citations from Eusebius, Lactantius, St.
Jerome, St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory Nazianzen,
in Tissot, L'Imagination, p. 369; also Jacob (i.e., Paul Lecroix),
Croyances Populaires, p. 183. For St. Augustine, see also his De
Civitate Dei, lib. xxii, chap. vii, and his Enarration in Psal., cxxxv,
1. For the breaking away of the religious orders in Italy from the
entire supremacy of this idea, see Becavin, L'Ecole de Salerne, Paris,
1888; also Daremberg, Histoire de la Medecine. Even so late as the
Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther maintained (Table Talk, Hazlitt's
translation, London, 1872, pp. 250, 256) that "Satan produces all the
maladies which afflict mankind."

But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to diabolical
agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and especially the more
obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed to the vast majority of mankind
possible only on the theory of Satanic intervention: any approach to a
true theory of the connection between physical causes and mental results
is one of the highest acquisitions of science.

Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men had obtained
an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude, down to the end of
the seventeenth century, nothing was more clear than that insanity is,
in many if not in most cases, demoniacal possession.

Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had asserted
itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed destined to bring
a large fruitage of blessings.(342) In the fifth century before the
Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos asserted the great truth that all
madness is simply disease of the brain, thereby beginning a development
of truth and mercy which lasted nearly a thousand years. In the first
century after Christ, Aretaeus carried these ideas yet further, observed
the phenomena of insanity with great acuteness, and reached yet more
valuable results. Near the beginning of the following century, Soranus
went still further in the same path, giving new results of research, and
strengthening scientific truth. Toward the end of th