Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/214

 words by deeds. The trials and sufferings they had undergone, both from the Herodian family and the Romans; the constant outrage to their deepest feelings afforded by the presence of an alien soldiery; the insults, humiliations, and cruelties they endured at the hands of their conquerors, had wrought the people up to a state of almost unbearable tension and extreme excitement. That under the pressure of such a state of things nervous disorders should be widely prevalent, is not to be wondered at. And these affections, as is well known, are peculiarly infectious, easily spreading through a whole village and raging in a whole country (See, for example, Hæcker's Epidemics, passim). Hysteria, moreover, takes many forms. Now it may show itself as species of madness; now as the imagination of some positive disease. Here it may be violent and outrageous; there morbid and gloomy. Another peculiarity is its tendency to increase the more, the greater the attention paid to it by friends and onlookers. To be an object of interest to those around is enough to inflame the symptoms of the hysterical patient. And when this interest took shape in a belief that he was inhabited by some bad spirit—which was equally the theory of the Jews in the time of Christ, and of Christians up to the middle ages—it was natural that the evil should be magnified to the highest degree. There are, however, some individuals who exercise a peculiar power over sufferers of this description. Their looks, their touch, their words, are all soothing. By addressing the victims of hysteria in tones of authority, by taking their hands, or otherwise endeavoring to calm their excited nerves, these physicians of nature may put a stop to the pain, or expel the illusion. In modern days they would be called mesmerists, and though the pecularities of temperament to which they owe their mesmeric faculty are not yet understood, their influence is well known to those who have examined into the subject.

Among the Jews, the subjects of these current maladies were said to be possessed by devils. And it was a common profession to cast out these so-called devils, for we are told that it was