"
The result was natural: the treatment of the insane fell more and
more into the hands of the jailer, the torturer, and the executioner.
To go back for a moment to the beginnings of this unfortunate
development. In spite of the earlier and more kindly tendency
in the Church, the Synod of Ancyra, as early as 314 A. D.,
commanded the expulsion of possessed persons from the Church;
the Visigothic Christians whipped them; and Charlemagne, in spite
of some good enactments, imprisoned them. Men and women, whose
distempered minds might have been restored to health by
gentleness and skill, were driven into hopeless madness by
noxious medicines and brutality. Some few were saved as mere
lunatics--they were surrendered to general carelessness, and
became simply a prey to ridicule and aimless brutality; but vast
numbers were punished as tabernacles of Satan.
One of the least terrible of these punishments, and perhaps
the most common of all, was that of scourging demons out of the
body of a lunatic.
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