[[163b]]
III. THEOLOGICAL "RESTATEMENTS."--FINAL TRIUMPH
OF THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW AND METHODS.
But, happily, long before these latter occurrences, science
had come into the field and was gradually diminishing this class
of diseases. Among the earlier workers to this better purpose was
the great Dutch physician Boerhaave. Finding in one of the wards
in the hospital at Haarlem a number of women going into
convulsions and imitating each other in various acts of frenzy,
he immediately ordered a furnace of blazing coals into the midst
of the ward, heated cauterizing irons, and declared that he would
burn the arms of the first woman who fell into convulsions. No
more cases occurred.[[164]]
These and similar successful dealings of medical science
with mental disease brought about the next stage in the
theological development. The Church sought to retreat, after the
usual manner, behind a compromise. Early in the eighteenth
century appeared a new edition of the great work by the Jesuit
Delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for the use
of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the
part played by Satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested
that, while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that
Satan enter the human body in order to make these causes
effective.
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