xxii, chap.

vii, and his Enarration in Psal., cxxxv, 1.

For the breaking away of the religious orders in Italy from the entire supremacy of this idea, see Becavin, L'Ecole de Salerne, Paris, 1888; also Daremberg, Histoire de la Medecine.

Even so late as the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther maintained (Table Talk, Hazlitt's translation, London, 1872, pp.

250, 256) that "Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind." But, if ordinary diseases were likely to be attributed to diabolical agency, how much more diseases of the brain, and especially the more obscure of these! These, indeed, seemed to the vast majority of mankind possible only on the theory of Satanic intervention: any approach to a true theory of the connection between physical causes and mental results is one of the highest acquisitions of science.
Here and there, during the whole historic period, keen men had obtained an inkling of the truth; but to the vast multitude, down to the end of the seventeenth century, nothing was more clear than that insanity is, in many if not in most cases, demoniacal possession.
Yet at a very early date, in Greece and Rome, science had asserted itself, and a beginning had been made which seemed destined to bring a large fruitage of blessings.( 342) In the fifth century before the Christian era, Hippocrates of Cos asserted the great truth that all madness is simply disease of the brain, thereby beginning a development of truth and mercy which lasted nearly a thousand years.