tre was ended. What the exorcisms and fetiches
and prayers and processions, and drinking of holy water, and ringing of
bells, had been unable to accomplish during eighteen hundred years, he
achieved in a few months. His method was simple: for the brutality and
cruelty which had prevailed up to that time, he substituted kindness and
gentleness. The possessed were taken out of their dungeons, given sunny
rooms, and allowed the liberty of pleasant ground for exercise; chains
were thrown aside. At the same time, the mental power of each patient
was developed by its fitting exercise, and disease was met with remedies
sanctioned by experiment, observation, and reason. Thus was gained
one of the greatest, though one of the least known, triumphs of modern
science and humanity.

The results obtained by Pinel had an instant effect, not only in France
but throughout Europe: the news spread from hospital to hospital. At his
death, Esquirol took up his work; and, in the place of the old training
of judges, torturers, and executioners by theology to carry out its
ideas in cruelty, there was now trained a school of physicians to
develop science in this field and carry out its decrees in mercy.(381)

(381) For the services of Tenon and his associates, and also for the
work of Pinel, see especially Esquirol, Des Maladies mentales, Paris,
1838, vol. i, p. 35; and for the general subject, and the condition of
the hospitals at this period, see Dagron, as above.

A similar evolution of better science and practice took place in
England. In spite of the coldness, and even hostility, of the greater
men in the Established Church, and notwithstanding the scriptural
demonstrations of Wesley that the majority of the insane were possessed
of devils, the scientific method steadily gathered strength. In 1750
the condition of the insane began to attract especial attention; it was
found that mad-houses were swayed by ideas utterly indefensible, and
that the practices engendered by these ideas were monstrous. As a rule,
the patients were immured in cells, and in many cases were chained to
the walls; in others, flogging and starvation played leading parts, and
in some cases the patients were killed. Naturally enough, John Howard
declared, in 1789, that he found in Constantinople a better insane
asylum than the great St. Luke's Hospital in London. Well might he
do so; for, ever since Caliph Omar had protected and encouraged the
scientific inves