ition of the
medical man in such cases. Most doctors of the time were mere empirics;
dabbled more or less in alchemy; and, in the treatment of mental
disease, were little better than children. They had for co-practitioners
all who, by their credit with the populace for superior wisdom, found
themselves in a position to engage in a profitable employment. Priests,
preachers, schoolmasters--Dr. Pinches and Sir Topazes--became so
commonly exorcists, that the Church found it necessary to forbid the
casting out of spirits without a special license for that purpose.[1]
But as the Reformers only combated the doctrine of possession upon
strictly theological grounds, and did not go on to suggest any
substitute for the time-honoured practice of exorcism as a means for
getting rid of the admittedly obnoxious result of diabolic interference,
it is not altogether surprising that the method of treatment did not
immediately change.

[Footnote 1: 72nd Canon.]

63. Upon this subject a book called "Tryal of Witchcraft," by John
Cotta, "Doctor in Physike," published in 1616, is extremely instructive.
The writer is evidently in advance of his time in his opinions upon the
principal subject with which he professes to deal, and weighs the
evidence for and against the reality of witchcraft with extreme
precision and fairness. In the course of his argument he has to
distinguish the symptoms that show a person to have been bewitched, from
those that point to a demoniacal possession.[1] "Reason doth detect,"
says he, "the sicke to be afflicted by the immediate supernaturall power
of the devil two wayes: the first way is by such things as are subject
and manifest to the learned physicion only; the second is by such things
as are subject and manifest to the vulgar view." The two signs by which
the "learned physicion" recognized diabolic intervention were: first,
the preternatural appearance of the disease from which the patient was
suffering; and, secondly, the inefficacy of the remedies applied. In
other words, if the leech encountered any disease the symptoms of which
were unknown to him, or if, through some unforeseen circumstances, the
drug he prescribed failed to operate in its accustomed manner, a case of
demoniacal possession was considered to be conclusively proved, and the
medical man was merged in the magician.

[Footnote 1: Ch. 10.]

64. The second class of cases, in which the diabolic agency is palpable
to the layman as well as the