SICK MINDS IN EARLY TIMES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 35, 10 August 1933, Page 19

SICK MINDS IN EARLY TIMES

"During tho middle ages, lierbs wctc used as a means of curing- tho 'phrensie,'" stated Mr. W. E. Leicester, LL.B., in an address on "Insanity in Law to the New Zealand Insurance, Institute. "The prescriptions of such early Greek and Roman -writers as Galan and Apuleius were copied and used until well into the seventeenth century. Tho treatment of epilepsy was the swallowing of the brain of a mountain goat after it had been drawn through a gold ring; 'wolf's flesh was applied to hallucinations; while mandrake, administered in warm water, was considered just tho thing for witlessness—a cure,,one imagines, of which many of the aristocracy must have become heartily sick. . The holy Church, spreading the gentle spirit of religion through the land, lagged sadly behind the infidel Greeks who sought to heal the lunatic with music and happy natural surroundings. A demented person, by a curious "twist of reasoning on the part of his persecutors, was held, to be deliberately harbouring the evil one, sp the sport of devil-chasing or .exorcism was instituted, and' monks joined in.it with the same zest as the general public. The flogging of mad people was a popular amusement. As late as 1622, Sir Jfatthcw Hale, the Chief Justice of England, expressed his belief :in witchcraft, and for fifty years after this date convictions were obtained for this offence.