403.
These and similar successful dealings of medical science with mental disease brought about the next stage in the theological development.

The Church sought to retreat, after the usual manner, behind a compromise.
Early in the eighteenth century appeared a new edition of the great work by the Jesuit Delrio which for a hundred years had been a text-book for the use of ecclesiastics in fighting witchcraft; but in this edition the part played by Satan in diseases was changed: it was suggested that, while diseases have natural causes, it is necessary that Satan enter the human body in order to make these causes effective.

This work claims that Satan "attacks lunatics at the full moon, when their brains are full of humours"; that in other cases of illness he "stirs the black bile"; and that in cases of blindness and deafness he "clogs the eyes and ears." By the close of the century this "restatement" was evidently found untenable, and one of a very different sort was attempted in England.
In the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1797, under the article Daemoniacs, the orthodox view was presented in the following words: "The reality of demoniacal possession stands upon the same evidence with the gospel system in general." This statement, though necessary to satisfy the older theological sentiment, was clearly found too dangerous to be sent out into the modern sceptical world without some qualification.

Another view was therefore suggested, namely, that the personages of the New Testament "adopted the vulgar language in speaking of those unfortunate persons who were generally imagined to be possessed with demons." Two or three editions contained this curious compromise; but near the middle of the present century the whole discussion was quietly dropped.
Science, declining to trouble itself with any of these views, pressed on, and toward the end of the century we see Dr.Rhodes at Lyons curing a very serious case of possession by the use of a powerful emetic; yet myth-making came in here also, and it was stated that when the emetic produced its effect people had seen multitudes of green and yellow devils cast forth from the mouth of the possessed.
The last great demonstration of the old belief in England was made in 1788.

Near the city of Bristol at that time lived a drunken epileptic, George Lukins.