THE MEDICAL MAN AND THE WITCH DURING THE RENAISSANCE

Ever since the decline of Ancient Rome, medical science has turned its back upon psychopathology. Even the Alexandrian School, with its revival of interest in medical psychology, failed to break down the estrangement, and only during the last century has the developmental path of medicine converged to some extent with that of psychiatry. For over fifteen centuries every type of mental disease remained outside the doctor's realm, even outside his ken, and it was the mystic, the theologian, the philosopher, the lawyer, the prosecuting attorney and the professional cleric who dealt with the mentally sick. Since psychopathology has for centuries been more closely related to the history of thought and civilization than to those subjects (biology, physics, chemistry) which played such an enormous part in the development of medicine, the history of psychiatry had, until recently, less to do with the history of medical science proper than with the history of theological philosophy and of criminal law, both lay and ecclesiastic.

Medicine eventually recaptured the field of psy-
chopathology to incorporate mental disease into its
system of scientific healing. The present volume of
the Noguchi lectures treats of this recapture. Dr.
Zilboorg's three lectures are an attempt to recon-
struct the processes which gave birth to modern
psychiatry.

The first lecture is devoted to a discussion of the
*Malleus Maleficarum* (The Witch's Hammer), the

fifteenth century textbook of the Inquisition which treats of the methods to be used in dealing with witches. An analysis of the *Malleus* demonstrates how prevalent mental diseases were in those days, and how their prevalence, vying with human igno- rance, came out poor second.

The second lecture reviews the attitude of official medicine towards the *Malleus* and its tradition. The views of the leading physicians and surgeons of the sixteenth century are subjected to a close historico-psychological scrutiny to show the almost complete divorcement of medicine and psychiatry; the earliest signs of awakening to the problems of mental disease are observed; and the psychopathological contributions of Paracelsus and particularly those of Cornelius Agrippa are for the first time reviewed from the historical point of view.

The third lecture presents the first study of Johann Weyer (sixteenth century) as a clinical psychopathologist and endeavors to give this great physician his proper place in the history of psychological medicine as the real founder of modern psychiatry. Weyer's professional personality, his clinical contributions, and his influence on posterity are reviewed in some detail, and an attempt is made to outline the influence of Weyer's views which have percolated more or less anonymously into our present-day conceptions of mental disease.

Dr. Henry E. Sigerist has contributed a preface which outlines the scope of the volume and which also briefly summarizes the life work of Dr. Zilboorg. The volume has an index and fifteen illustrations, including a frontispiece.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece, Gregory Zilboorg

Witches producing hail (Ulrich Molitor's *Landis*)

St. Remy curing a man possessed by the devil

Making a pact with the devil (*Compendium Maleficarum*)

A wizard practicing his incantations in Virginia (etching by Theodore de Bry)

The witches' repast (Ulrich Molitor's *Landis*)

Henricus Cornelius Agrippa

The birth of Antichrist (etching, 1475)

St. Mathurin delivering the daughter of Emperor Maximilian of a demon (*Book of Hours*; *Life of St. Mathurin*)

The devil seducing a witch (Ulrich Molitor's *Landis*)

A sorcerer riding a wolf (Ulrich Molitor's *Landis*)

Johann Weyer

Anne Hendriks burnt in Amsterdam A° 1571

Exorcism of the mentally sick in the Church of Bonnet (drawing by Abbot Frusotte after one of nineteen frescoes of XV century)

229 pages, 12mo, cloth, $2.50

THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS • BALTIMORE