In asking alms, he insisted that he was "possessed," and proved it by jumping, screaming, barking, and treating the company to a parody of the Te Deum.
He was solemnly brought into the Temple Church, and seven clergymen united in the effort to exorcise the evil spirit.

Upon their adjuring Satan, he swore "by his infernal den" that he would not come out of the man--"an oath," says the chronicler, "nowhere to be found but in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, from which Lukins probably got it." But the seven clergymen were at last successful, and seven devils were cast out, after which Lukins retired, and appears to have been supported during the remainder of his life as a monument of mercy.
With this great effort the old theory in England seemed practically exhausted.
Science had evidently carried the stronghold.

In 1876, at a little town near Amiens, in France, a young woman suffering with all the usual evidences of diabolic possession was brought to the priest.

The priest was besought to cast out the devil, but he simply took her to the hospital, where, under scientific treatment, she rapidly became better.( 409) (409) See Figuier; also Collin de Plancy, Dictionnaire Infernale, article Posseses.
The final triumph of science in this part of the great field has been mainly achieved during the latter half of the present century.
Following in the noble succession of Paracelsus and 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 leading to epidemics are found to arise from a morbid tendency to imitation.