Demons, witches and the legacy of Johann Weyer, October 8, 1992

Dr. John Martin: I'll tell you that Dick and I had planned that I would appear in a flash of flame and smoke, with a smell of sulfur, but we thought maybe we'd better not scare you like that. There were other reasons, but we thought it probably be wisest not to try that. Thank you for coming out on this bewitched night. It's a good night for this topic. Just before I left, I thought of a few things that I thought I might forget to say, so I wrote them down. I'm going to read this sort of out of place in my talk, but I want to get this in. You can be thinking about it. First of all, I'd like to say that I hope I'm not possessed by a demon. I'm pretty sure I have known some witches, and ... Well this has to do with a history of psychiatry. I am neither a historian nor a psychiatrist, but I would like to tell you this. It is little wonder that the treatment of mental illness and the acceptance of psychological pathology and therapeutic psychiatry has been so slowly accepted into the medical arts as a respectable member. From earliest times, they have been confused with the effects of divine will with a darker side of the supernatural, and have been compounded by ignorance, faulty physiology, and plain ordinary quackery. With that said, I want to make a quick review of mental illness, which of course was well recognized by the Greeks and they recognized that mental illness was just that, hat it was not due to the supernatural. Hysteria for instance, was due to the wandering uterus, a perfectly natural cause. I don't know what they did about a hysterical man, but they recognized epilepsy, the falling sickness, the sacred sickness. Not as supernatural, they said no, this is due to faulty humors in the brain filtering into the system. It was good that was it was put on a natural basis, a little faulty physiology, but not too bad for 400 B.C. Now, medical education generally in mental illness was lacking, especially after the Greek period through the middle ages. There was practically nothing learned additionally about mental illness, or most other forms of medicine until the medical schools began to appear. For instance at Salerno, and Mount Montpelier, and Paris, London, and Padua, Bologna, and so forth much later, around 1200, 1250, 1300. Psychiatry was really not recognized ... I mean, mental illness was not recognized as a separate entity until it was impressed upon the world ineffectually by the way, by Johann Weir about 1563 in a very famous book. The middle ages bequeathed nothing but superstition, compounded with heresy and ignorance, and terrible feeling of oppression of the masses so that by the time the Renaissance appeared about, whenever you want to put it, 1250, 1300 the masses were in a terrible condition intellectually. The so-called medical profession knew nothing or cared nothing about mental illness. The church had said this is a matter of the divine and of supernatural. It has nothing to do with the physical state. It wasn't until along in the 1700s, some Englishmen such men as [Chain 00:04:28], and Batty, and the [Tooke 00:04:31] family realized that these patients were sick and that they shouldn't be treated with chains and restraints, but should be treated as sick human beings. That there were special things you could do for mentally ill patients. This progressed slowly, ineffectually really, until oh around 1800. [Shiarogi 00:04:55] in Italy, and [Paneo and Escoral 00:05:00] in France pled for a kinder treatment of these people. Pled that they be cut loose from their chains, that they not be restricted to these dungeons and to places which became bedlams. It was no longer Bethlehem hospital, it was Bedlam. This progressed slowly through the latter part of the 1800s with such men as [Shaco 00:05:29], who studied hysteria so effectively. [Ryle, Grisinger, Broiler 00:05:33], Kraeplin and some other famous Germans, ending we'll say with Freud, who established psychoanalysis on a firm basis. We've gone through the period of physical restraint and dungeons in this country, I hope. I'm not sure completely. We have certainly gone through the awful stages of a strict restriction of just putting away the sick, of doing something about it; catatonic, schizophrenic, besides chaining them down to the floor. We have gone through the rigors of insulin and shock therapy, although I guess shock therapy is still given in some places. Sorry to say, in my opinion. We've gone through, thank God, lobotomy. We have practically cleared the large mental institutions with the drug therapy of later years, and we continue to learn more about the actual physiology of the brain and the part it plays in a pathological state in mental illness. We are progressing at a rapid rate nowadays. Our big institutions, such as a state institution in Mount Pleasant, and Independence, and Clarendon, and so forth. The federal institutions are fairly well emptied of everybody but the true psychotics. These patients are out, enjoying freedom. Unfortunately, some of them have become street people. Now, a word about psychoanalysis here. You knew Freud wasn't the first one, by any means. Saint Augustine was the first real psychoanalyst. In his confessions, he made the first, true statement of psychopathology and how to handle it, by self analysis. It was the greatest statement in this effect, till Freud about 1600 or 1700 years later. The confessions in his confessions, after his baptism of age 33, up to which time he had led a terribly wild life of sexual excesses over which he became very disturbed and very remorseful, and very worried, and very depressed. In his confessions, he laid bare his soul in a way that has hardly ever been so completely done again. There's a story about Saint Augustine. He was no saint, until he was baptized at age 33. His mother, by the way, became Saint Monica. Through her intercession and prayer, and the Holy Spirit, he finally accepted Christ as his savior, but until that time there was this apocryphal story, I think it's apocryphal. I hope it is. He was praying one day, and he said, "Oh Lord, God almighty, deliver me from my terrible venality and my sins, and these sexual excesses, but not just yet." Another man we shouldn't forget is Girolamo Cardano, who in 1575 wrote his biography, De Propria Vita. He again laid bare his soul, and again, a large part of this worry and self hate, and self doubt, and depression, which was called melancholy was due to his excessive sexual activities, which he regretted greatly. As a matter of fact, sex is an unbroken thread through the whole story of psychiatry, psychoanalysis particularly, and through the Bible, and through the history of almost every phase of psychiatry. An outstanding example of a psychoanalyst who analyzed himself in brilliant scholarly fashion was Richard Burton, who in 1621 as dean of divinity and dawn at Oxford, one of the real scholars of his age, wrote this strange, long, complicated, extremely interesting book called, The Anatomy of Melancholy. He too, had self doubts about his sexuality. He had doubts about his ambivalence towards the opposite sex. He was a paranoid. He had all sorts of reasons to feel that he was inadequate. He had many, many reasons, or name many factors which entered in to the makeup of a psychotic personality. He recognized mental illness as a very special thing. He stated it clearly, even more clearly than Saint Augustine. Richard Burton had all sorts of cures for melancholy, even from a leaf of too much wind in the guts. He had some strange ideas as to what would cause depression, but he realized he was depressed, he analyzed himself, and he wrote it down in this self revealing book. In this book, there's a very interesting poem called, Abstract of Melancholy. "Now desperate, I hate my life. Lend me an halter or a knife. All my griefs to this are folly. Not so damned as melancholy." Now there's a clear expression of a death wish, if I ever heard one. The death wish is a frequent symptom of depression. I think it was Thoreau who said, "The main mass of men, lead lives of quiet desperation." Isn't that fitting? Now Freud, in his interpretation of dreams in 1900, his greatest work again, revealed his inner most self. It was a solidifying factor in the, shouldn't really say theory, in the facts of psychoanalysis. He too, had a great deal of self doubts. He had some problems with his sexual identity. He was slightly paranoid, and remember he had an awful fuss over some very basic factors with Adler and Jung, and some others of his early followers. Psychoanalysis has been around a long time also. It's time for me to a few references to the Bible, if you'll excuse me. Now I'm not a Bible hater, but I haven't anything to say here that recommends the Bible as bedtime reading. The Bible is really a general putdown of women. It's one of the most misogynist documents that I think I've ever laid my hands on. I get a great laugh out of it really, frankly. I think the Old Testament's a scream. From Exodus remember that the original sin was when the serpent so easily seduced a woman, Eve. He said, "Oh go ahead and eat this apple. It won't hurt you, and give Adam a bite. You'll be much smarter." They knew they were naked, so they promptly covered their genitalia with fig leaves and it's been forever after called, the shameful parts. Sex, has thereafter been a shameful thing. Sex, and any form of sexual activity, except for a few exceptions that I've found in the Bible is looked upon with disdain, hate, advice to the contrary. Except for special instances, certainly within the marriage, is it condoned. Sexuality is a pretty bad thing, according to the Bible. In Exodus II, "Thou shalt not permit a witch to live." That later became the rallying cry of the witch hunts. Leviticus 20, "A man also, or a woman who has limited spirit, or that is a wizard shall surely be put to death. They shall stone them with stones, and their blood should be upon them." Matthew IV, "Christ had a conference with the devil on the mountain top. The devil was a very real person." Matthew VIII, "Christ cast demons out of two tormented men into swine." That proved that there is such a thing as demon possession. Samuel I, remember how King Saul who was suffering a severe psychoneurosis and a feeling of guilt? Went to the witch of Endor, a woman, and asked that the soul of old prophet Samuel be resurrected, and she did. It said, "And Samuel wasn't very well pleased." Remember also the story of Sarah and Abraham, and Sarah talked her husband into adultery with her handmaiden Hagar so that they would have some progeny, and he did. "He lay with Hagar, the maid servant, and produced a bastard son named, Ishmael." That's all in the Bible. Now the apostle Paul, who is not one of my favorites in the Bible, but who we must admit did more than any other one person to spread the Christian gospel, says in Corinthians I, and if you don't think this is misogyny I don't know what you think misogyny is. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. In Colossians, "wives submit to your husbands as is fitting in the Lord." Now Paul was a celibate, and if you read a little of his epistles you will soon learn that Paul was not a bit comfortable with his celibacy. He said if you have to marry, well do it. It's better than burning, but I'm burning. We see this theme of sexuality of erraticism, of the put down of women, of misogyny running all through the middle ages, into the Renaissance, into the witchcraft period, and all through the Bible. The other day I was looking at TV, and I thought this face was familiar in this interview. It was a very imperial looking man, whose face was faintly familiar, except that now he looks something like an overfed toad. I thought, yes I do know him. It was that guru we love to hate, Gore Vidal. The interviewer said, "What do you think is mankind's greatest misfortune?" He said, "Monotheism." Moses, and Jesus, and Mohammad, and monotheism, just like King Frederick II said in 1200, are the three greatest imposters that were ever thrusted off on the world. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad. Now, from the 1300s through the late 1600s was a rough time in Europe. Really, there were certain aspects of the book of Revelations that came true. The four horsemen of the apocalypse did ride the skies, of western Europe and Britain. War, famine, pestilence, and death, they were all there. This period inherited nothing but superstition, and a fear of the church, oppression from the church, visible living conditions, all in this paradoxical period, which we call the Renaissance. There were great people during the Renaissance. We know of these great minds, people like Copernicus, the great anatomist, sig Padua, and elsewhere. People like Erasmus, people like Luther who started the Reformation. People like Paracelsus who was a madman but a very bright man nevertheless, and who along with others was smart enough to know that witchcraft was a false idea. Along about this time, there begin to appear some new voices and new faces. This Edward that I mentioned, who was king of Naples, or Frederick king of Naples, did a great deal to expand and strengthen the great school of Salerno. He was a free thinker. He dabbled a little in sorcery himself, but he was a good practicing Christian, and persecuted witches. I can't figure that out either. Now, we have the Childrens Crusade in 1212, which was a terrible fateful thing. Then we had such phenomena as the Saint Vitus Dance. People going, dancing in the streets with these chorea form like movements, which meant nothing. That's finally died out. We had the flagellanties, people who were around whipping themselves with thongs until their skin was bloody strips, all for the love of God. We had a growth of witchcraft, which had always been practiced in some form or other, which grew out of the ignorance and the oppression, the fear of the church, superstition, and down right ignorance. It grew to such an extent that the church became worried, particularly when Erasmus and Luther, and Paracelsus, and people like that came along, the church became very alarmed. In 1484, Pope Innocent, get that, Innocent. Pope Innocent VIII, appointed two very industrious Dominican monks, Johann Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer as inquisitors in northern Germany. They went a little bit further. They said let's publish a book, let's make a book up which will be a rule book to follow. Define witchcraft, give the inquisitors and the civil courts something to follow as a rule book, define witchcraft, tell them how to torture these people. Tell them how to get confessions. Tell them how to kill them. Let's get rid of witchcraft. Now, the psychiatric explanation of the monks part, not just these two, but all the monks, which were sniffing out witches all over Europe. Hordes of ignorant, dirty monks were chasing down these poor old, recluse, usually old women, sometimes frightened young women and having them burned. The psychiatric explanation is that these men were suffering their own sexual suppressions, their unfulfilled sexual fantasies, their own unfulfilled eroticism. That they were masters, therefore, of misogyny and woman hating. They wrote a book called, Malleus Maleficarum, and I'm going to pass this around. I put a marker in there, you can read it quickly and pass it on. This was the rule book, this is a modern cheap edition of the book, which was published finally in 1486. It is the most comprehensive book, and the ludist, most erotic, most pornographic, most complete, most detailed book, erotic or otherwise that I think has ever been published to my knowledge. It is absolutely a fantastic book to look through. There is no aspect of witchcraft that isn't covered. It's all backed up with the Bible. It's all backed up by references to arcane sources that nobody had ever heard before, but it's Saint somebody or rather, all the time. This book was not only promoted by and encouraged, and distributed by the faculty of theology at Cologne, but it became the case book, the rule book for witch persecution. Now, if you didn't believe this book and everything it said, you were a heretic. You were awfully careful what you said. Once accused of witchcraft, who could you ever hope to find as a witness in your favor? Who would want to witness for a confirmed witch? I wouldn't. Nobody else did. Now, it tells you in there how dirty, how foul, how licentious, how given to eroticism, how given to intercourse with the devil, how given to producing monsters conceived by intercourse with the devil. It tells you in detail womens activities was a succubi and the incubi who were demons, who had intercourse with living human beings during sleep. It tells you how witches deprive men of their genitalia or cause men to become impotent, or women to become sterile, or how the uterine fetuses were killed, or the monsters that witches delivered. How witches destroy crops, destroy livestock, cause fires, or natural catastrophes to occur. Usually these witches were poor, old recluses, ignorant, socially outcast. Old women usually who were so confused and so ignorant, that when they were hauled into court, they couldn't even understand the language with which they were being accused. The book told how to detect them, and how to treat them in the dungeons. For instance, they were to be beaten in the dungeons, and you always used a new broom, you beat them with a new broom because the devil hates a new broom above all things else. Many an old lady had been beaten to death with a new broom in the dungeons. It tells you how to haul these people into court, and question. They'd take them back, maybe let them lie in a dungeon where they might die thankfully, of starvation or disease, and not be brought back to court for six months. This might go on for years. They would be brought into court sometimes, an old woman, shivering, frightened, not knowing what was going on, couldn't understand what was being said. Believing, well maybe I did have intercourse with the devil. Maybe that hail storm was my fault. It might be a confused young woman who was just feeling the first stirrings of her sexuality, who might say, "Well, okay maybe I did have intercourse with the devil last night," and she was too frightened to deny it. It might be an eight, or 10, or 12 year old child, hysterical beyond all hope of recovery. Sometimes, just a malingering little kid, who was trying to get somebody into trouble. Sometimes these women were stood on a podium, as I am standing, before a slack jawed, voyeuristic crowd of townspeople with her back to the panel of luring judges, priests, monks, and town officials. She would be stripped naked, she mustn't face the judges because she might cast the evil eye on them. She would be stripped naked, her head, her armpits, and her pubic area would be shaved in public, because you see the devil can hide in a very small amount of hair. We didn't want any devil hiding anywhere on this woman. Then her body was inspected for devil signs, marks that the devil had branded on her body. Well, they would rather die many times in prison, than undergo such humiliation. They would rather die than undergo the tortures. They sometimes ask for death, rather than tortures. Now there were several ways of killing these people. The favorite way was burning them to death. Some towns had as many as two stakes all prepared with wood, to which the bodies could be tied and burned. Sometimes they were beheaded. Sometimes they were hanged. They were sometimes drowned. Before this, if they didn't confess, they could be tortured by nailing their hands to planks of wood, being hanged by their thumbs or their ankles. Having their eyes put out. Having hot oil poured on their naked bodies, or branded with a hot iron. Catch 22, they could be tied foot and hand, and thrown in a pond of water. If they sunk, they were innocent, and God took them home. If they somehow or other, made it back to shore, they were guilty because the devil got them back to shore, so they were sure to burn. You couldn't win. There were many ways of disposing of these people. The favorite one however, being burning at the stake. Jill [Hanwire 00:30:27] states that in some towns, there were two, three, or more stakes busy all the time. At one time, in Lorraine, a north eastern province of France, in one year in the 1500s there were over 900 old women burned at the stake in one year. You see, it was a pretty terrible thing. The paradoxical thing about this is, that at this time, this was the Renaissance. This was the high point of culture. Here was Leonardo Da Vinci, here was Michelangelo, Copernicus, Vesalius, Harvey, Luther, Erasmus, you name it. All these wonderful scholars, and now all these awful thing going on in the civil courts, and in the churches. Now, I don't want to belabor this too much, but I'd like to mention here something that I mentioned, dicamus the other day. I said you know, I was reading about this and I came across this statement that Julius Caesar said way back when. By the way, the worst country was France. Germany and the low lands were next. Next was England, Spain and Italy not so bad. It was France who was the greatest offenders so far as the witchcraft hunting was concerned. Julius Caesar said, "Of all the peoples I have ever encountered, the Gauls are the most superstitious, blood thirsty, and cruel." I hope there are no people here of French decent. No [inaudible 00:32:35]. Now, the Malleus Maleficarum, which was I say was the guide and textbook for the inquisitors, made a point of women kind being so foul and erotic, dirty, licentious, no good, a troublemaker, greedy, gossipy, a troublemaker in general. Here's the reason. Woman created the original sin. Woman was made from a man, therefore, she's less than a man. She was made from Adam's rib. Now, a rib is a crooked bone. It isn't even a straight bone, like the radius or the humerus. It's a crooked bone. Furthermore, it wasn't made from up high on the thoracic cage, it was made from one of the lower ribs. I suppose one of Adam's little, bitty, 11 to 12 floating ribs. I don't know. Pretty ridiculous. We mustn't be so smug, because you know in 1692 and '93 in Salem village, Massachusetts we had our own witch hunts. There were five and six witches hanged at a time in Salem, Massachusetts. We have our own dark spot in this story of witchcraft. I'll get around to psychiatry eventually. Even Cotton Mather said you're carrying it too far. Now we had here, in addition to hanging, that was the favorite method in Massachusetts. We also had the method of pressing. The body was put, the victim was put supine on the ground, and stones were piled on his abdomen and chest until he could no longer breathe. That was called, pressing. That was all done in the name of the loving God you know. All this was done because it said in the Bible, "Thou shalt not permit a witch to live." It was in Genesis, in plain print. It was the word of God. Well I could churn your stomachs up here in good shape if I continued on with the Malleus Maleficarum, which in English means, the Witch's Hammer. I think that here's a good time to relieve our tedium by showing you some slides. Now, Hartmann Schedel was the author of the Nuremberg Chronicle 1493. This is from his own partially hand covered copy. The author's own copy, which was reproduced in part, in facsimile by Adrian Wilson in a book called, the Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle. We copied this picture from this wood cut from the Nuremberg Chronicle. This is a picture of the original sin. It's all told in one picture. Here's the serpent. Come on Eve, take a bit of the apple and get smart, and so she did. Then she gave Adam a bite of the apple, and they knew they were naked, as the Bible said. From then on, the genitalia and sex, and anything to do with genitalia and sex was taboo. They knew they were naked, so they covered their genitalia with fig leaves. Now, later literature called those genitalia, the shameful parts. Here we see them. Here's the original sin. There's the woman, there's Adam, and here God in anger is driving them from the Garden of Eden. I think that's a great picture. It's a beautiful picture. It's an unusual wood cut. The provenance is very unusual, and I thought you might be interested to see what the original looked like. Next picture. Now this is strictly from Act 4, Scene 1 in Hamlet. The third witch, you remember there were three witches out on the heath boiling a pot. I think the third witch has gone to look for a newborn baby, because as you remember, "Trouble trouble, boil and bubble. New finger of a newborn babe, gets delivered by a drab. Eye of newt and toe of frog, hair of bat, and tongue of dog. Filet of the finished snake, in the cauldron, boil and bake." Here are these witches, are making a hail storm. This is an old wood cut from the Renaissance. Next. This is from the cover of this modern edition of Malleus Maleficarum. Here, they're burning three women. The devil is still tormenting this poor woman. Back here is somebody is having his head cut off. Here are a couple of casual observers. Next. This is the title page of Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, is a very telling a very interesting, and a very complicated title page. This is jealousy, one of the components of melancholy. This is solitude. This is Democritus Jr. He signed his name Democritus Jr. instead of Robert Burton. Democritus was a philosopher in the town of Abdera. Abdera was a town in Thrace and it was particularly known for the stupidity of its occupants. He put himself down. It was self denigration, and that's another sign of depression and melancholy. What we call depression, psychoneurosis, they called melancholy. Here is unrequainted love. Here is a melancholic man. Here is a picture of the author himself. Here is a woman who represents superstition, praying to signs of the devil, astrological signs, and the very picture of superstition. She's not praying to the Christian cross, that is not a Christian cross by the way. This is mania, chained. One wonders, in 1621 what they did with a too schizophrenic? What they did with a person born an imbecile? What they did with a cerebral palsy, a deaf mute, or a down syndrome? What happened to those people back in those days? Down here, which isn't shown, is a picture of two plants Borage and Hellebore, poisonous plants. Next. This is a picture of a scene in Bedlam, the famous Bethlehem hospital in London where insane people were chained to the floors, chained to the walls, left in their own feces and urine, left to die of exposure and lack of care. You could pay a penny or two and come in and observe this exciting, nauseating scene. Here are two ladies who look through this open door at this naked man sitting on a barrel, with a paper crown on his head, and a stick in his hand pretending he's the king of somebody or other. Here are these chained idiots. Here's a man who looks like he's hydrocephalic. Here's another idiot, and here's obviously a very disturbed person. This is Bedlam. This picture was painted by Goya. Next. Here are some restraints, which were used well into this century. This says 18th century methods of restraining the insane. 18th, 19th, and into the 20th century, this is a straight jacket and that has been used within living memory in our state hospitals. I hope it isn't used anymore, but I wouldn't swear that it isn't used in some places still in this country. Heaven knows, how much worse our some of the restraints that were used other than this, and is still maybe used in some countries. Next. This dates from about 1800, Benjamin Rush, one of the fathers of American medicine had this ingenious device whirling the patient, so that by centrifugal force blood would be driven to the brain and cure the patient of his psychosis. Benjamin Rush. Next. Here's a man about whom we came to talk finally. This is Johann Weyer, born in 1515, a year after Vesalius was born. Died in 1588, and wrote his famous book, De praestigiis daemonum, concerning the prestidigitations or trickery of demons. In 1563, the year before Vesalius died, that book was also printed by Oporinus in Bosol, who printed Vesalius Fabrica. There is much in common between these two men. They personally, methodically, and with great detail recorded their personal observations just as Harvey did. Wrote them down and left them for posterity to ponder. Conquer thyself, a very good model for this man who was born in flabian circumstances in what is now Holland. Had his early education under the strange scholarly man, Agrippa in Bonn. Later, studied in Paris and Orleans, and got his medical degree, and practiced five or six years general practice in the low lands. He came early in life to be the personal physician to Charles V, Duke of Cleves, Julich, and Berg, and spent most of his life under that man's protectorship so that he could say to the inquisitors what he thought about the horrors and criminal sadism which they were visiting upon all the old women they could put their finger on in western Europe. This book, De praestigiis daemonum, is Freud said, one of the 10 most influential, meaningful books that has ever been published. Now that's a strong statement, and you'll have to give Freud a little room there for prejudice, but nevertheless this book is a list of case histories of witches, and how he saved them from their death. He brought people into his home, and counseled them. Fed and clothed them, treated them humanely. Counseled them how to get back into society, and to forget their fears and superstitions. He did this with children. He did it with young women, and he confronted the inquisitors for the first time that any medical man ever had had the courage to do so, by saying you are all wrong. This is contrary to the Lord's will, because he was a very pious man. He had his tongue in his cheek, when he said, "Yes I think there are devils." He was a free thinker really, very much like the Duke of Cleves. Very much like Erasmus. Now, I'm about out of time. I want to read in a few succinct words, what I wrote down as what I feel is the legacy of this very unusual pious, plain man who wrote this very effectual book, which began to take hold about 1875.