this better purpose was the great Dutch
physician Boerhaave. Finding in one of the wards in the hospital at
Haarlem a number of women going into convulsions and imitating each
other in various acts of frenzy, he immediately ordered a furnace of
blazing coals into the midst of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and
declared that he would burn the arms of the first woman who fell into
convulsions. No more cases occurred.(408)

(408) See Figuier, Histoire de Merveilleux, vol. i, p. 403.

These and similar successful dealings of medical science with mental
disease brought about the next stage in the theological development. The
Church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, behind a compromise.
Early in the eighteenth century appeared a new edition of the great work
by the Jesuit Delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for
the use of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition
the part played by Satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested that,
while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that Satan enter
the human body in order to make these causes effective. This work claims
that Satan "attacks lunatics at the full moon, when their brains are
full of humours"; that in other cases of illness he "stirs the black
bile"; and that in cases of blindness and deafness he "clogs the eyes
and ears." By the close of the century this "restatement" was evidently
found untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in
England.

In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1797,
under the article Daemoniacs, the orthodox view was presented in the
following words: "The reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the
same evidence with the gospel system in general."

This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological
sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into the
modern sceptical world without some qualification. Another view was
therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the New Testament
"adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons
who were generally imagined to be possessed with demons." Two or three
editions contained this curious compromise; but near the middle of the
present century the whole discussion was quietly dropped.

Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views, pressed
on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr. Rhodes at Lyons curing
a very seri