Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

l66
FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA.
John Hunter and Pinel and Tuke and Esquirol, have come
a band of thinkers and workers who by scientific observation
and research have developed new growths of truth, ever
more and more precious.
Among the many facts thus brought to bear upon this
last stronghold of the Prince of Darkness, may be named
especially those indicating " "
expectant attention an expectation
of phenomena dwelt upon until the longing for them
becomes morbid and invincible, and the creation of them
perhaps unconscious. Still other classes of phenomena lead-
ing to epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency
to imitation. Still other groups have been brought under
hypnotism. Multitudes more have been found under the
innumerable forms and results of hysteria. A study of the
effects of the imagination upon bodily functions has also
yielded remarkable results.
And, finally, to supplement this work, have come in an
array of scholars in history and literature who have investigated
myth-making and wonder-mongering.
Thus has been cleared away that cloud of supernaturalism
which so long hung over mental diseases, and thus have
they been brought within the firm grasp of science.
*
* To go even into leading citations in this vast and beneficent literature would
take me far beyond my plan and space, but I may name, among easily accessible
authorities, Brierre de Boismont on Hallucinations, Hulme's translation, i860 ;
also James Braid, The Power of the Mind over the Body, London, 1846 ; Krafft-
Ebing, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, Stuttgart, 1S88 ; Tuke, Influence of the Atind on
the Body, London, 1884 ; Maudsley, Pathology of the Mitid, London, 1879 ; Car-
penter, Mental Physiology, sixth edition, London, 18S8 ; Lloyd Tuckey, Faith
Cure, in the Nineteenth Century for December, 1888 ; Pettigrew, Superstitions con-
nected with the Practice of Medicine and Surgery, London, 1844 ;
Snell, Hexenpro-
cesse und Geistesstorung , Miinchen, i8gi. For a very valuable study of interesting
cases, see The Law of Hypnotism, by Prof. R. S. Hyer, of the Southwestern Uni-
versity, Georgetown, Texas, 1895.
As to myth-making and wonder-mongering, the general reader will find inter-
esting supplementary accounts in the recent works of Andrew Lang and Gould.
Baring-
A very curious evidence of the effects of the myth-making tendency has recently
come to the attention of the writer of this article. Periodically, for many years
past, we have seen, in books of travel and in the newspapers, accounts of the won-
derful performances of the jugglers in India : of the stabbing of a child in a small
basket in the midst of an arena, and the child appearing alive in the surrounding
of seeds planted, sprouted, and becoming well-grown trees under the hand
crowd ;
i