a personage as Sir Thomas More, and as late as the
sixteenth century. But if the disease continued, as it naturally would
after such treatment, the authorities frequently felt justified in
driving out the demons by torture.(355)

(355) For prescription of the whipping-post by Sir Thomas More, see D.
H. Tuke's History of Insanity in the British Isles, London, 1882, p. 41.

Interesting monuments of this idea, so fruitful in evil, still exist.
In the great cities of central Europe, "witch towers," where witches
and demoniacs were tortured, and "fool towers," where the more gentle
lunatics were imprisoned, may still be seen.

In the cathedrals we still see this idea fossilized. Devils and imps,
struck into stone, clamber upon towers, prowl under cornices, peer out
from bosses of foliage, perch upon capitals, nestle under benches,
flame in windows. Above the great main entrance, the most common of
all representations still shows Satan and his imps scowling, jeering,
grinning, while taking possession of the souls of men and scourging
them with serpents, or driving them with tridents, or dragging them
with chains into the flaming mouth of hell. Even in the most hidden and
sacred places of the medieval cathedral we still find representations
of Satanic power in which profanity and obscenity run riot. In these
representations the painter and the glass-stainer vied with the
sculptor. Among the early paintings on canvas a well-known example
represents the devil in the shape of a dragon, perched near the head of
a dying man, eager to seize his soul as it issues from his mouth, and
only kept off by the efforts of the attendant priest. Typical are the
colossal portrait of Satan, and the vivid picture of the devils cast
out of the possessed and entering into the swine, as shown in the
cathedral-windows of Strasburg. So, too, in the windows of Chartres
Cathedral we see a saint healing a lunatic: the saint, with a long
devil-scaring formula in Latin issuing from his mouth; and the lunatic,
with a little detestable hobgoblin, horned, hoofed, and tailed, issuing
from HIS mouth. These examples are but typical of myriads in cathedrals
and abbeys and parish churches throughout Europe; and all served to
impress upon the popular mind a horror of everything called diabolic,
and a hatred of those charged with it. These sermons in stones preceded
the printed book; they were a sculptured Bible, which preceded Luther's
pictorial Bible.(