defeat of the theological position.

So long as disease was attributed to a demoniacal cause, so long did
exorcisms and other miraculous cures continue, and so far as these
cures were efficacious, they must be classed as mental healing.
Probably they continued longer in insanity and mental derangement on
account of the beneficent and soothing effect of religion upon a
diseased mind. Priestly cures of all kinds were largely, if not
wholly, suggestive, and no history of mental healing would be complete
without a resume of ecclesiastical therapeutics. Many vagaries of
healing which the church introduced might be mentioned to show to what
extent the people may be misled in the name of religion. For example,
the doctrine of signatures, to be later discussed, was disseminated by
priests and monks, and if these medicines were ever effective it must
have been by mental means.

The demon theory of disease, which began before the age of history,
and continued down through the savage ages and religions, through the
early civilizations, through the gospel history, and dominated early
Christianity, was finally, in the sixteenth century, to be vigorously
assailed and largely overcome. The cost of this was considerable;
attached as it was to the Christian church, it seemed necessary to
destroy the whole Christian fabric in order to unravel this one
thread. Atheism, therefore, was rampant, and science and atheism
became almost synonymous, and continued so until the church freed
science from its centuries of bondage and allowed it to develop so as
to be again in these days a co-laborer.

In pleasing contrast to the destructive and deterrent efforts of the
church against the development of medicine is the helpful care of the
sick exercised by Christians. The example of Jesus as shown by his
tender sympathy, his helpful acts, and his instruction to his
followers, bore fruit in the relief and care of sufferers by
individuals and religious asylums. About the year 1000 and later, the
infirmaries which were attached to numerous monasteries, and the
_hospitia_ along the routes of travel which opened their doors to sick
pilgrims, were but the development of a less portentous attempt on the
part of individuals and societies to care for the sick. The Knights of
St. John, or the Hospitalers as they were called, assumed as their
special duty the nursing and doctoring of those in need of such
attention, especially of sick and infirm pilgrims and