Chapter I (2)

I cannot pass from this subject without doing honour to two men who abroad, no less than Reginald Scot in Britain, opposed the immolation of lunatics--Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who wrote a remarkable work in 1567, and appealed to the princes of Europe to cease shedding innocent blood; and Cornelius Agrippa,[50] who interfered in the trial of a so-called witch in Brabant, having sore contention with an inquisitor, who through unjust accusations drew a poor woman into his butchery, not so much to examine as to torment her. When Agrippa undertook to defend her, alleging there was no proof of sorcery, the inquisitor replied, "One thing there is which is proof and matter sufficient; for her mother was in times past burnt for a witch." When Agrippa retorted that this had reference to another person, and therefore ought not to be admitted by the judge, the inquisitor was equal to the occasion, and replied that witchcraft was naturally engrafted into this child, because the parents used to sacrifice their children to the devil as soon as they were born. On this Agrippa boldly exclaimed, "Oh, thou wicked priest, is this thy divinity? Dost thou use to draw poor guiltless women to the rack by these forged devices? Dost thou with such sentences judge others to be heretics, thou being a greater heretic than either Faustus or Donatus?" The natural consequence was that the inquisitor then threatened to proceed against the advocate himself as a supporter of witches; nevertheless, he continued his defence of the unhappy woman, who, whether a lunatic or not, was delivered, we read, by him "from the claws of the bloody monk, who, with her accuser, was condemned in a great sum of money, and remained infamous after that time to almost all men."

Scot, who cites this case, shows great familiarity with examples of melancholy and delusion, and from his work have been derived many of the best known illustrations of the latter, including the delusions of being monarchs, brute beasts, and earthen pots greatly fearing to be broken. The old story of the patient who thought Atlas weary of upholding the heavens and would let the sky fall upon him, is narrated by this author, as well as that of the man who believed his nose to be as big as a house.

It comes then, to this--to revert to the question, what was the medical knowledge or practice at the time of Coke and Hale, to which they would turn for direction when insanity came before them in the Courts of Law?--that when the lawyers went to the doctors for light they got surprisingly little help. They had better have confined themselves to reading the old Greek and Roman books on medicine, of which the medical practice of that period was but a servile imitation, and not have added, from their belief in witchcraft, the horrible punishment of lunatics, which in our country extended over the period between 1541 and 1736, when the laws against witchcraft were abolished. The last judicial murder of a witch in the British Isles (Sutherlandshire) was in 1722.

Leaving now the insane who were punished as witches, I pass on to remark that in Percy's "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry," it is stated that the English have more songs and ballads on the subject of madness than any of their neighbours. "Whether," the writer proceeds, "there be any truth in the insinuation that we are more liable to this calamity than other nations,[51] or that our native gloominess hath peculiarly recommended subjects of this class to our writers, we certainly do not find the same in the printed collections of French and Italian songs." Half a dozen so-called mad songs are selected. These refer to much the same period as that we have been considering; and, in fact, we come upon the "Old Tom of Bedlam," or Cranke or Abram man, who "would swear he had been in Bedlam, and would talk frantickly of purpose," so notorious in connection with the beggary which endeavoured to make capital out of the asylum most familiar to our ancestors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this light the Bedlam beggars appear in "King Lear"--

"The country gives me proof and precedent
Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,
Stick in their numb'd and mortify'd bare arms
Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary;"

and these enforce their charity by lunatic "bans," that is, by licences to beg under the badge of the Star of Bethlehem.

Some doggerel from the most ancient of the Percy "Reliques" will serve for a sample of the rest:

"Forth from my sad and darksome cell,
Or from the deepe abysse of Hell,
Mad Tom is come into the world againe,
To see if he can cure his distemper'd braine."

Tom appears to have brought away with him some of his fetters, then sufficiently abundant in Bedlam:

"Come, Vulcan, with tools and with tackles,
To knocke off my troublesome shackles."

_This_ method of treatment--by fetters--has not, it may be well to state, survived, like immersion, in the practice of the present Master of Bedlam.

We learn from Shakespeare how "poor Tom that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, the wall-newt and the water [newt]; ... swallows the old rat, and the ditch-dog;" and "drinks the green mantle of the standing pool," was "whipped from tything to tything, and stocked, punished, and imprisoned....

Mice, and rats, and such small deere
Have been Tom's food for seven long yeare."[52]

Whipping-posts were very common in the reign of Henry VIII., and we suppose long before; certainly also much later. About the middle of the seventeenth century an old poet, John Taylor, once a waterman on the Thames, and hence called the "Water Poet," wrote:

"In London, and within one mile, I ween,
There are of jails and prisons full eighteen,
And _sixty whipping-posts_ and stocks and cages."

The whipping-post was sometimes called the "tree of truth." There is a curious passage in Sir Thomas More's works, in which he orders a lunatic to be bound to a tree and soundly beaten with rods.

"There was a tree in Sir Thomas More's garden, at which he so often beat Lutherans, that it was called the 'tree of troth,'" says Burnet. This was not the tree at which he had the poor lunatic flogged, for he says that was in the street.

"It was a good plea in those days to an action for assault, battery, and false imprisonment, that the plaintiff was a lunatic, and that therefore the defendant had arrested him, confined him, and _whipped_ him."[53]

Whipping-posts may still be seen in some villages in England, in the vicinity of stocks. Of course they were largely employed for idle vagabonds, but many really insane people suffered. The following item from the constable's account at Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, illustrates the custom of whipping wandering lunatics:--"1690/1. Paid in charges, taking up a distracted woman, watching her and whipping her next day, 8s. 6d."[54]

Let me here refer for a moment to the "brank."

The "brank" or "scold's bridle" was very probably used in former days for lunatics--an instrument of torture which has received much elucidation from my friend Dr. Brushfield, the late medical superintendent of Brookwood Asylum. Indeed, it is certain that it, or a similar gag, called the "witch's bridle," was employed for these unfortunate suspects, of whom so many, as we have good reason to conclude, were insane or hystero-epileptics. In the church steeple at Forfar one was preserved, within recent times, with the date 1661.[55] Archdeacon Hale many years ago suggested that the "brank" was used to check noisy lunatics of the female sex; and in reference to this, Dr. Brushfield remarks: "Medical officers of asylums can always point out many female patients who, if they had been living a couple of centuries back, would undoubtedly have been branked as scolds. One of the female lunatics in the Cheshire Asylum gave me, a few days since, a very graphic account of the manner in which she had been bridled some years ago whilst an inmate of a workhouse."[56]

No doubt, in addition to branks and whipping-posts, the pillory and stocks, and probably the ducking-stool, were made use of for unruly and crazy people, who nowadays would be comfortably located in an asylum.

What now, let us ask in conclusion, are the practical inferences to draw from the descriptions which I have given respecting the popular and medical treatment of lunatics in the good old times in the British Isles?

In the first place, we see that the nature of the malady under which the insane laboured was completely misunderstood; that they often passed as witches and possessed by demons, and were tortured as such and burnt at the stake, when their distempered minds ought to have been gently and skilfully treated. Some, however, were recognized by the monks as simply lunatic, and were treated by the administration of herbs, along with, in many instances, some superstitious accompaniment, illustrating, when successful, the influence of the imagination.

Further, the medical treatment, so far as it made any pretension to methods of cure, was either purely empirical, or founded upon the one notion that descended from generation to generation from the earliest antiquity--that there was an excess of bile in the blood, and that it must be expelled by emetics or purgatives.

Again, there was the more violent remedy of flagellation, one always popular and easy of application; equally efficacious, too, whether regarded as a punishment for violent acts, or as a means of thrashing out the supposed demon lurking in the body and the real cause of the malady. And there was, of course, as the primary treatment, seclusion in a dark room and fetters.

To anticipate what belongs to subsequent chapters, we may say here that when the insane were no longer treated in monasteries, or brought to sacred wells, or flogged at "trees of truth," they fared no better--nay, I think, often worse--when they were shut up in mad-houses and crowded into workhouses. They were too often under the charge of brutal keepers, were chained to the wall or in their beds, where they lay in dirty straw, and frequently, in the depth of winter, without a rag to cover them. It is difficult to understand why and how they continued to live; why their caretakers did not, except in the case of profitable patients, kill them outright; and why, failing this--which would have been a kindness compared with the prolonged tortures to which they were subjected--death did not come sooner to their relief.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Collected and edited by the Rev. Oswald Cockayne, M.A., 1865. Published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls.

[3] Corn or seed to cure bewitching (Saxon). Supposed to be the seeds of "wild saffron."

[4] _Op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 137; Leech Book, I. lxiii.

[5] That is, a small bell used in the church, probably the acolyte's. St. Fillan's was twelve inches high. See _postea_.

[6] _Op. cit._, vol. i. p. 161.

[7] _Op. cit._, p. 171.

[8] _Op. cit._, pp. 313-315.

[9] _Op. cit._, p. 351 ("Medicina de quadrupedibus" of Sextus Placitus).

[10] _Op. cit._, p. 361.

[11] _Op. cit._, vol. ii. pp. 343, 143, 343, 307, and 345.

[12] Wodnes (Saxon) signifies madness. "Ance wod and ay waur," _i.e._ increasing in insanity. (See Jamieson's Scotch Dictionary, 1825: "Wodman = a madman.")

[13] _Op. cit._, vol. ii. p. 335.

[14] Preface to vol. ii. p. xix.-xxiii.

[15] Vol. iv., preface, p. xxxiv.

[16] Vol. iv. p. 225.

[17] In Chambers's "Book of Days," in an article on "Holy Wells," it is added to the above statement that in the seventeenth century St. Winifred could boast of thousands of votaries, including James II.

[18] In the "Miller's Tale," the carpenter is befooled into looking like a madman. "They tolden every man that he was wood," etc. (Percy Society's edition, vol. i. p. 152).

[19] Early English Text Society, vol. iii. p. 163. See also Clarendon Press Series, edited by Mr. Skeats. London, 1866.

[20] "Archaeologia Britannica," by Ed. Lhuyd, 1707. The Armoric word for mania is _diboelder_ or _satoni_; the Cornish, _meskatter_; the British, _mainigh_, among others.

[21] These passages from Dr. Borlase and Dr. Boase will be found in the valuable address at the Royal Institution of Cornwall, by W. C. Borlase, F.S.A., 1878 (Journal of the Institution, 1878, No. xx. pp. 58, 59). It forms a little work on Cornish Saints, and from it is derived the statement made in regard to St. Nonna or Nun.

[22] Honoured both in Scotland and Ireland on account of his great sanctity and miracles, he "exchanged his mortal life for a happy immortality in the solitude of Sirach, not far from Glendarchy, Scotland. His mother, Kentigerna, was also a woman of great virtues, and honoured after her death for a Saint" ("Britannia Sancta, or Lives of British Saints," 1745, p. 20).

[23] Vol. i. p. 282.

[24] "Darker Superstitions of Scotland," p. 82. Macfarlane, "Geographical Collections," MS., vol. i. p. 154.

[25] Dr. Mitchell has clearly shown that St. Maree is a corruption of Maelrubha, who came from Ireland, and not of Mary, as stated by Pennant.

[26] "Tour in Scotland and the Hebrides," vol. i. p. 332, edit. 1774.

[27] Or Gringorian water. In what respect it was special I do not know, but holy water is said to have been so called because Gregory I. recommended it so highly. "In case," says Rabelais, "they should happen to encounter with devils, by virtue of the Gringoriene water they might make them disappear" ("Gargantua," i. 43). See Brewer's "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable."

[28] "On Various Superstitions in the North-West Highlands and Islands of Scotland, especially in Relation to Lunacy," by Arthur Mitchell, A.M., M.D., 1862; from the "Proceedings of the Antiquarian Society of Scotland," vol. iv. The aphorism of Boerhaave, relating to the treatment of lunatics, quoted by this writer, is entirely in keeping with the practice described in the text, "Praecipitatio in mare, submersio in eo continuata quamdiu ferre potest, princeps remedium est."

[29] _Op. cit._, p. 15.

[30] Mitchell, _op. cit._, p. 18. He adds it was Murdoch's "calamity to live among an unenlightened people, a thousand years removed from the kindly doctrines of the good Pinel." "I am not here detailing what happened in the Middle Ages. It is of the nineteenth century--of what living men saw that I write." In the _Inverness Courier_, August 31, 1871, is an extraordinary account of dipping lunatics in Lochmanur, in Sutherlandshire, in the district of Strathnaver, at midnight: "About fifty persons were present near one spot.... About twelve (affected with various diseases) stripped and walked into the loch, performing their ablutions three times. Those who were not able to act for themselves were assisted, some of them being led willingly, and others by force. One young woman, strictly guarded, was an object of great pity. She raved in a distressing manner, repeating religious phrases, some of which were very earnest and pathetic.... These utterances were enough to move any person hearing them. Poor girl! What possible good could immersion be to her?... No man, so far as I could see, denuded himself for a plunge.... These gatherings take place twice a year, and are known far and near to such as put belief in the spell. But the climax of absurdity is in paying the loch in sterling coin.... I may add that the practice of dipping in the loch is said to have been carried on from time immemorial, and it is alleged that many cures have been effected by it" (Correspondent of the _Courier_, who witnessed the scene on the 14th of August, 1871).

[31] "Darker Superstitions of Scotland," p. 190.

[32] _Op. cit._, p. 60; from "Trial of Alexander Drummond in the Kirktown of Auchterairdour," July 3, 1629.

[33] _Op. cit._, p. 61, "Trial of Marable Couper," June 13, 1616.

[34] _Op. cit._, p. 98.

[35] Dalyell, p. 550.

[36] Joyce's "Irish Names of Places," vol. i. p. 172.

[37] "Ancient and Present State of the County Kerry," p. 196.

[38] Joyce's "Irish Names of Places."

[39] "Letters from the Kingdom of Kerry, in the year 1845." Dublin, 1847.

[40] Vol. ii. p. 226. On witchcraft in Ireland see the "Annals of Ireland," translated from the original Irish of the Four Masters, by Owen Connellan, Esq. Dublin, 1846.

[41] His "Breviary of Helth" was published in 1547.

[42] This cross was made of sea sand, in the sixth century, by St. Kentigern, called also St. Mungo. A collegiate church was erected there in 1449. He healed the maniacal by the touch. See "The Legends of St. Kentigern," translated by Rev. William Stevenson, D.D., Edinburgh, 1874; and _Notes and Queries_, April 21, 1866.

[43] Page 976, ed. 1633. According to modern botanists, black hellebore is not, as was for long supposed the #Helleboros melas# of Hippocrates. Of several species growing in Greece, the medicinal virtues of _Helleborus orientalis_ resemble most nearly those of the classic descriptions of _H. niger_. See "The British Flora Medica," by B. H. Barton, F.L.S., and T. Castle, M.D., 1877, p. 203.

[44] Scot was born near Smeeth, 1545. He was educated at Oxford, and lived on his paternal estate. He was the son of Sir John Scot, of Scot's Hall. Died 1599. His famous work, "The Discovery of Witchcraft, proving the common opinions of Witches contracting with Divels, Spirits, or Familiars to be but imaginary conceptions; wherein also the lewde unchristian practices of Witchmongers in extorting Confessions, is notably detected; whereunto is added a Treatise upon the nature and substance of Spirits and Divels," was published in 1584. This is the title of the second edition, which differs slightly from the first.

[45] _Op. cit._, p. 72.

[46] "Medical Councils," 1679; "Opera Medica," 1703.

[47] Edit. 1616. James says he wrote it "chiefly against the damnable opinions of Wierus and Scot, the latter of whom is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing as witchcraft, and so maintains the old error of the Sadducees in the denying of spirits."

[48] Johann Wierus, born at Grave on the Meuse, Brabant, published his work against the prevalent view of witchcraft in 1567. See "Histoires, Disputes, et Discours des Illusions, et Impostures des Diables, des Magiciens infames, Sorciers, etc. Par Jean Wier, 1579." He died 1588, at Tecklenburg. His works were printed in one volume in 1660.

[49] _Op. cit._, p. 234.

[50] Henry Cornelius Agrippa was born in 1486, at Cologne, and was the contemporary of Paracelsus. Agrippa was the master of Wierus. He was Town Advocate at Metz and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. Imprisoned for a year at Brussels, on the charge of magic, and ceaselessly calumniated after his death. See Plancey's "Dict. Infern.," art. "Agrippa," and Thiers' "Superst." (vol. i. pp. 142, 143). See his Memoir, by Professor Morley, 1856. He was a doctor of medicine as well as law. He himself believed in witchcraft.

[51] As in Hamlet. "_There_" (England) "the men are as mad as he."

[52] "King Lear," Act iii. sc. 4.

[53] Lord Campbell's "Lives of the Lord Chancellors."

[54] _Notes and Queries_, vol. vi. p. 327, No. 153. A more extraordinary entry occurs under the same date: "Paid Thomas Hawkins for whipping 2 people y{t} had the small-pox, 8d." Under date 1648: "Given to a woman that was bereaved of her witts the 26 of Aprill, 1645, 6d." (_Op. cit._, No. 242, July 22, 1854).

[55] According to Dr. Brushfield, torture was practised in Scotland after it was used for the last time in England in 1640. No specimens of the "brank" are known to exist in Ireland or Wales.

[56] "Obsolete Punishments," Part I., "The Brank," by T. N. Brushfield, M.D., 1858, p. 20.