y the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ, which God hath given to make known
unto His servants those things which are shortly to be ... I exorcise
you, ye angels of untold perversity.... May all the devils that are thy
foes rush forth upon thee and drag thee down to hell!... May the Holy
One trample on thee and hang thee up in an infernal fork, as was done to
the five kings of the Amorites!... May God set a nail to your skull, and
pound it with a hammer as Jael did to Sisera!... May Sother break thy
head and cut off thy hands, as was done to the cursed Dagon!... May God
hang thee in a hellish yoke, as seven men were hanged by the sons of
Saul!"[44]

Marcus Aurelius mentions as one of his debts to the philosopher
Diognetus that he had taught him "not to give credit to vulgar tales of
prodigies and incantations, and evil spirits cast out by magicians or
pretenders to sorcery, and such kind of impostors."[45] What would have
been the thoughts of the great emperor, could he have revisited the
earth two centuries after his death and seen the then civilised world
enveloped in a mental atmosphere in which such ideas as those above
described could live?

All over Europe for centuries lunatics were whipped, and otherwise
ill-treated, in the hopes of expelling the demons that were troubling
them. The seventy-second Canon of the Church of England still provides
that no unlicensed person shall "cast out any devil or devils" under
pain of penalties prescribed. A Bishop of Beauvais, in the fifteenth
century, not only caused five devils to come out of one person, but
actually induced them to sign a document promising not to molest this
particular sufferer again. Tremendous, again, were the labours of the
Jesuit Fathers of Vienna, who boasted that they had cast out no less
than 12,652 'living devils.' Such arithmetical exactitude silences all
hostile comment. In some parts of Scotland, as late as 1783, lunatics
were left all night in the churchyard, with a holy bell over their
heads. In Cornwall, St. Nun's pool was famous for the cure of lunatics.
The poor devils were tied hand and foot and doused in the water until
they were cured--or killed. Even the embraces of prostitutes, for some
peculiar reason, were recommended as a cure for insanity.[46] In 1788,
in Bristol, a drunken epileptic, one George Larkins, was brought into
church, and seven clergymen solemnly set themselves to the task of
exorcising the possessing demon. Whereupon Satan swor