r like
a dying or dead Man." Susan knew the devil as a gentleman dressed in black
clothes, and also as a little boy; but could not be induced to confess to
any of the more striking monstrosities beyond what might have well
belonged to an ordinary case of hallucination. She was executed as the
other two; but we are not told if Grace Thomas, or Dorcas Coleman, or
Grace Barnes, or Anthony Jones recovered their health now that the witches
were dead, or if hysteria and rheumatism and neuralgia and scrofula were
found more troublesome enemies to conquer than three crazy old women. It
would be curious as well as interesting to know the condition of the
honestly deceived and actually diseased after the death of the possessing
witch. In those instances where crutches were thrown away, and fits
suddenly brought to a close, the instant the law had laid its gripe on the
neck of the unfortunate accused, we have no choice but to refer the whole
proceedings to imposture quickened by enmity or the desire of notoriety;
but there were cases where a strange and sudden disease did really appear
as bewitchment to the afflicted, and of these one would be glad to know
the after mental condition when the obsessing witch was killed, yet the
obsessing sickness unconquered. Did experience ever open their eyes or
shake their faith? or did they die in their belief that the stake and the
gallows were the finest remedies known for disordered functions or organic
mischief? No one of the time was sufficiently accurate, or sufficiently
unprejudiced, to be able to give us reliable information, and thus we have
lost a most valuable indication of the absolute power exercised by the
mind over the body.

SIR JOHN HOLT'S JUDGMENTS.[153]

Mr. May Hill, minister of Beckington, in Somersetshire (near Frome), had a
servant, one Mary Hill, whom Satan and the malice of his servants had
grievously bewitched. Mr. Baxter had brought to him a bag of iron, nails,
and brass which the girl had vomited, and he kept some of them to show his
friends. "Nails about three or four inches long, doubled, crooked at the
end, and pieces of old Brass doubled, about an Inch broad and two Inches
long, with crooked edges," all of which Mary had brought up, together with
about two hundred crooked pins. Elizabeth Carrier was first committed on
the charge of having bewitched her; but a fortnight after, Mary, whom this
sacrifice had temporarily appeased, went back to her old ways, and beg