e afflicted with this disorder, often live a long time. For
all mad folks in general bear hunger, cold, and any other inclemency
of the weather; in short, all bodily inconveniencies, with surprizing
ease; as they enjoy a strength of constitution superior to what might
be easily imagined. Likewise it frequently happens, that an epilepsy
comes on madness of a long standing. For these diseases are nearly
related; and in this case, we know by experience, that there remain
not the least hopes of recovery. Lastly it is to be observed, that the
patient is either frantic or melancholic, according as his habit of
body is disposed to receive this or that injury.

But that the casting out of devils, is nothing more than the removal
of madness, many do not believe, upon this account, that those things
which happen to persons thus affected, seem to them impossible to be
done by the force of nature. But certainly these gentlemen are too
much strangers to physic, and have not sufficiently attended to
phoenomena no less surprizing, which daily occur in other diseases. Do
we not often see that violent affections of the mind are the cause of
death? A sudden fright has destroyed many, and even excessive joy has
been fatal. A dangerous distemper sometimes passes from one part of
the body to another, in the twinkling of an eye. The venom thrown into
the mass of blood by the bite of a mad dog, generally lies still a
good while; and at the end of some weeks, sometimes months, exerting
its strength, it produces symptoms not inferior to those, which are
said to be produced by devils. What is more surprizing than some
things which fall out in pregnancies? If a pregnant woman happens to
have an eager desire for any thing, and is disappointed, she sometimes
marks the foetus with the figure or likeness of the object longed for,
on this or that part of the body. And, what is still more, and
approaches to a prodigy, upon the mother being terrified by a sudden
injury done to any one part, that very part in the child suffers the
same evil, and decays for want of nourishment. I know that the truth
of stories of this kind, is called in doubt by some physicians;
because they cannot conceive, how such things can happen. But many
examples, of which I have been an eye-witness, have freed my mind of
all scruples on this head. Now, the power of the imaginative faculty
is so stupendous, that the mind is not less affected by false, than by
true images, when dail