By this current
of thought was gradually developed one of the greatest masses of
superstitious cruelty that has ever afflicted humanity. At the
same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far as the insane
were concerned, was almost entirely cut off. In all the beautiful
provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human
suffering, there was for the insane almost no care. Some
monasteries, indeed, gave them refuge. We hear of a charitable
work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the
thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in
the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the south of France,
by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the Alexian
Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of
Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort
in the Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans.
Certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming
Christian slaves, found in the fifteenth century what John Howard
found in the eighteenth, that the Arabs and Turks made a large
and merciful provision for lunatics, such as was not seen in
Christian lands; and this example led to better establishments in
Spain and Italy.
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