At the same time the stream of Christian endeavour, so far as the insane were concerned, was almost entirely cut off.

In all the beautiful provision during the Middle Ages for the alleviation of human suffering, there was for the insane almost no care.

Some monasteries, indeed, gave them refuge.

We hear of a charitable work done for them at the London Bethlehem Hospital in the thirteenth century, at Geneva in the fifteenth, at Marseilles in the sixteenth, by the Black Penitents in the south of France, by certain Franciscans in northern France, by the Alexian Brothers on the Rhine, and by various agencies in other parts of Europe; but, curiously enough, the only really important effort in the Christian Church was stimulated by the Mohammedans.

Certain monks, who had much to do with them in redeeming Christian slaves, found in the fifteenth century what John Howard found in the eighteenth, that the Arabs and Turks made a large and merciful provision for lunatics, such as was not seen in Christian lands; and this example led to better establishments in Spain and Italy.
All honour to this work and to the men who engaged in it; but, as a rule, these establishments were few and poor, compared with those for other diseases, and they usually degenerated into "mad-houses," where devils were cast out mainly by cruelty.( 349) (349) For a very full and learned, if somewhat one-sided, account of the earlier effects of this stream of charitable thought, see Tollemer, Des Origines de la Charite Catholique, Paris, 1858.