POSSESSION BY THE DEVIL.

Press, Volume XXXI, Issue 4264, 29 March 1879, Page 3

POSSESSION BY THE DEVIL.

- ["Pall Mall Gazette."] - A letter from a Roman correspondent recently gave some remarkable detail* about a craze which baa fallen upon some inhabitant* of a village in the province of Udine. These «rou--i«ca — .. r iv, uuiesscureu oy u_t» t__«, believe tbemselve* to be possessed by the devil. This is no new thing'; for as late as 1862 the village of Morzines, in Savoy, was afflicted by what doc tors call" demonomania," and the antics of the "possessed" gave much trouble to the French authorities. Savoy had just been annexed to France, and Cardinal Billiett, Archbishop of Chambery, wrote dismally to the Duo de Pereigny, Minister of the Interior, explaining that the craze had begun iv 1857, and that exorcism had been tried in vain, both on the maniacs individually and on the villagers collectively. M. de Pereigny, who had but a slight faith in religious rites as curative agencies, ordered the prefect of the j Haute Savoie to cause all the demonomaniacs I to be arrested by the gendarmes and conveyed to lunatic asylums. This summary treatment worked an instantaneous cure. Tbe "possessed" who were lodged in madhouses, with one or two exceptions, soon recovered their reason, and the rest of the inhabitants of Morzines took care not to be smitten with tbe contagion—all of which bore out the theory of the eminent alienist, Dr. Pinel, who in his treatise on insanity remarks that religious remedies are the very worst that can be applied to demonomaniacs. The craze of " possession" ia but one of the many varieties of melancholia. The patient in bis morbid vanity believes that the devil has marked him out for a special visitation. To argue with such a person, or to bring incantations to bear against him, is to render him important in his own eyes, and thereby to rouse the very sentiments which have made him mad. ComElete isolation, douohes of cold water on the cad, and, above all, a cool indifference on the part of physiciens and attendants to all that the man says or does, are the surest methods of curing the demonomaniac. In old times the oomplaintrof " possession" was very frequent. It would smite whole districts, after cruel wars in which populations had been reduced to famine and become crazy from sheer misery and want of fsod. Extremes meet; and anemia produces the same effects as full bloodedness in rendering the brain liable to over-excitement. To this day " Revivalists," who haunt the slums of large cites singing hymns and crying out about the Day of Judgment, are sure to throw numbers of half-starved women into attacks of hysterics. In Russia, the ravings of the sect of tbe sect of " Daimoniks" are known to have such an effect upon the masses, reduced by misrule to the lowest state of poverty, that when a Daimonik begins to howl in a public Elace the police instantly seize upon him, or er, and upon all the surrounding folk who show symptom* of derangement. This is really the only way of dealing with the complaint ; and; when we wonder at the ferocity of our forefathers, who used to bang or burn wholesale so-called witches, who were but demonomaniacs, we should make some allowance for the fact that terror had been proved the only method fit to cope with whole populations tainted with the diabolical spirit. In the year 1572 no fewer than 500 supposed witches were burned at Geneva; but at the time the whole canton was infected, and business bad come to a standstill in the town in consequence of lunatics going about and screaming that the end of the world was at hand. In France trials for witchcraft were abolished under the administration of , Colbert, after an affair in Normandy, in which 600 people were implicated, and which rei suited in seventeen of them being sentenced to be hanged. The trouble began about a rat, which was alleged to have held diabolical conversations with a little boy aged ten. Louis XIV. quashed the judgment, ordered tie little boy to be whipped, and compelled j the seventeen demonomaniacs (who seemed to I have believed that the rat was Satan) lo choose between recanting their folly or being sent to prison. Sixteen of them re—nted : only one of them, an old woman, Buffered herself to ba put in gaol, where he died. In England a " witch " was hanged as late as the reign of Charles IL, upon a sentence of Sir Matthew Hale; and it was not till 1736 that trials for wit_craft were abolished by Act of Parliament in this count-y. Latterly we have seen much rnispkveed *ympa_y bestowed upon " Shakers," who are probably not far removed from demc__ania. The Convul•ioauts, who performed such strange pranks in the Cemetery of gt, Medard, ia Paris,

stewards the close of the seventeenth century, were prototype Sh-kers, wjw* believed that the remedy against all temptations of the flesh lay in much dancing. These poor folks gave out that they could perform miracles in healing tbe sick, restoring the halt; and they so excited Paris that Louis XIV. ordered the cemetery to be dosed. It was on this occasion that a wag wrote on the churchyard gates :— De par leßoi, defense a Dieu De faxre dcs miracles en cs lieu.