Medicine, belief, witchcraft and demonic possession in late seventeenth-century Ulster.

Ireland's only published witchcraft pamphlet, written by Daniel Higgs, The Wonderful and True Relation of the Bewitching of a Young Girle in Ireland, What Ways she was Tormented, and a Receipt of the Ointment that she was Cured with (1699), works within the confines of late seventeenth-century demonology, while upholding the patriarchy of the fledgling Protestant Ascendancy. More importantly, it provides rare insight into early modern Protestant witchcraft beliefs, highlights the limits of contemporary medical care and provision and details the pathways of self-medication people resorted to. Higgs' method of promoting self-medication as a cure to bewitchment and demonic possession was based on a remedy described in an obscure Renaissance magical text. To promote his 'cure' the pamphlet included a particularly vitriolic critique of the established Irish medical profession, as self-regarding and incompetent witchcraft deniers. This article uses Higgs' pamphlet to explore the limits to/of medical knowledge in early modern Ireland and Europe.

[Et d'allhora in poi, mai si sentì più bene: a historical survey to find nursing origins in post-tridentine whitchcraft lawsuits in County of Bormio (1596-1630)]. / Et d'allhora in poi, mai si sentì più bene: un'indagine storica alla ricerca delle origini dell'assistenza infermieristica nei processi per stregoneria del Contado di Bormio nel periodo post-tridentino (1596-1630).

INTRODUCTION: The phenomenon of witch-hunting in the post-tridentine period is a crucial moment for the history of nursing care. Modern historiography tells that women accused of witchcraft were custodian of female knowledge, both in domestic and small communities. PURPOSE: To investigate the witchcraft phenomenon in specific context of Bormio country- side, in order to identify proper nursing acts in gestures of women accused of witchcraft or sorcery. METHODS: Process for witchcraft - sorcery against 7 women in Bormio, between 1590 and 1631, were reviewed through a historical research methodology: sources retrieval, description and documentary analysis characterization, interpretation. RESULTS: In nearly all legal proceedings analyzed an indictment due to a healthcare expertise was found in terms of touch, feed, nearness, word. By multiple daily acts of women, intention to help and to express solidarity was clear, in a scenario of disease and suffering, solidarity is shown by acts of care. CONCLUSIONS: As a result of this study, we can resume that the period of the witches, so hard for women , was an age of repression for history of nursing itself. Mankind lifestyle, assistance, aid are ontological and anthropological foundations of nursing. Therefore, a past research of the traces of those foundations could mean rebuilding the own sense of nursing act: we tried to get an approach to that sense also "listening to" the gestures of women in Bormio.

[On the ancient and magical lesions in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries]. / Über die alten und zauberischen Geschwäre im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert.

At the beginning of the Renaissance magical, witchcraft and demonological medicine still played a large role in the poor healing ability of chronic leg ulcers. This included the general administration of magical potions and topical application. An example of the manipulation of the whole body by the devil was the Abracadabra text from Johann Christoph Bitterkraut in the year 1677. The use of bewitched ointments was particularly propagated by Paracelsus in 1622; however, even as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the invocation of supernatural powers was slowly diminishing until at the beginning of the nineteenth century the medical schools on chronic leg ulcers could be cultivated at the universities and by specialized wound healers.

Christianity and epilepsy.

Epileptic seizures have been known from time immemorial. Throughout the ages, however, ideas concerning the aetiology and treatment of epilepsy have changed considerably. Epilepsy is mentioned many times in the Pentateuch, where it is portrayed as a mysterious condition, whose symptoms, course and contingencies evade rational laws and explanations. In the Middle Ages, the accepted view which prevailed in social consciousness was that patients with epilepsy were possessed by Satan and other impure spirits. One common method of treatment of epileptic seizures was to submit the patient to cruel exorcisms. Patients were frequently injured in the process and some of them even died. Our understanding of epilepsy and its social consequences has improved considerably within the last century. The most significant progress as far as diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy is concerned took place in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Although we now know much more about epilepsy than we used to, this knowledge is still insufficiently popularized.

Witchcraft and Huntington's disease: a salutary history of societal and medical stigmatisation.

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines the notions that psychiatry can be greatly influenced by what society considers as 'normal', and that psychiatric thoughts and beliefs ebb and flow according to history and the social and cultural values of the time. CONCLUSIONS: As part of the medical profession, psychiatrists have much power in determining treatment and outcomes for patients. Unfortunately, this also means psychiatry has also been involved with the darker aspects of humanity, such as during the Nazi regime, and the abuse of patients' human rights. Huntington's disease (HD) is a neuropsychiatric illness from which observation and little knowledge reported by the medical profession spanned decades of incorrect and sensationalised documentation, that was also influenced by the values of the time. Such was the atmosphere of society during this period that the ideas and notions regarding HD disseminated by the respected medical profession were believed and accepted as fact by the general population and other professions, who would have been ignorant of any other contrary information. We need to be aware of social and cultural values as these can influence our understanding of diagnoses and treatments of our patients.

Witches, multiple personalities, and other psychiatric artifacts.

Contemporary psychiatric misdirections derived primarily from standard medical errors of oversimplification, misplaced emphasis, and invention are reviewed. These particular errors, however, were in part prompted and sustained by the sociocultural fads and fashions of the day. The results have been disastrous for everyone--patients, families, the public and psychiatry itself.

[Jan Wier: a heretical physician for the witches: historical truth and myths]. / Jan Wier; een ketterse arts voor de heksen. Historische waarheid en mythevorming.

BACKGROUND: Jan Wier was a remarkable person, well known to many as a leader of the fight against the persecution of witches. In a broader sense, he is regarded as one of the earlier defenders of human rights and as a acute observant of psychiatric disorders. AIM: To investigate whether these and other theories about Jan Wier are correct. METHOD: The biography studied was : "Jan Wier; a heretical physician for the witches" written by Vera Hoorens, professor of social and cultural psychology. RESULTS: Hoorens places the complete works by Wier in the historical context in which they were written. Wier was a particularly influential opponent of the persecution of witches, but this was not his main aim. His ideas were not original, although his books on witches show an early understanding of later psychiatric insight. Nevertheless he did contribute to an improvement in the administration of justice. His ideas on pathological anger were innovative, because when describing this disorder he included causes, effects, prognosis, treatment and prevention. CONCLUSION: On the basis of a thorough study of the complete works of Jan Wier, Hoorens distinguishes the historical truth from the myths that have arisen around this important person.

Strange, incredible and impossible things: the early anthropology of Reginald Scot.

Reginald Scot has been acclaimed as an early rationalist for his critical consideration of witchcraft in 1584. At the same time, the Discoverie of Witchcraft appears organized much as later classic anthropological monographs. This article considers whether his methods and writing might indeed correspond to what we recognise as the procedures of medical or psychiatric anthropology.

[The magic universe of cures: the role of magic practices and witchcraft in the universe of 17th century Mato Grosso]. / O universo mágico das curas: o papel das práticas mágicas e feitiçarias no universo do Mato Grosso cetecentista.

The article analyzes the role of healing agents played by practitioners of magic and witchcraft in Mato Grosso society during the 17th century. It observes that magic and witchcraft were developed as competitors, alternatives or associated with other forms of healing (official and lay). It points out how such roles contributed to the process of subjugating its practitioners, especially Africans, Indians and their descendents, and were appropriated as an opportunity for survival in the colonial slave society. The pastoral visit made by Bruno Pinna in 1785 to Cuiabá and nearby areas served as the principal source of knowledge regarding the practices and practitioners of magic and witchcraft.

Citation and distortion: Pierre Pomme, Voltaire and the crafting of a medical reputation.

In his Questions sur l'Encyclopédie Voltaire casts Doctor Pierre Pomme as an exorcist for modern times. For the philosopher, Pomme's treatment of hysteric and hypochondriac affections exemplifies the struggle against fanaticism and ignorance. In subsequent private correspondence Pomme and Voltaire exchange letters built around Christian metaphors. The term "exorcist" evokes a series of images putting into play the status of Pomme and the discipline of medicine as a whole. This article analyses the figurative schemes developed by Pomme and Voltaire, and how the use of metaphors generates a myth of therapy. It examines how Pomme seizes upon the rhetoric employed to create an image of his role as a doctor while also pursuing strategic aims particular to his work.

[Medical practice, magic and religion - conjunction and development before and after Reformation].

The conjunction between medical practice, religion and magic becomes rather visible when one peers into old scripts and ancient literature. Before the foundation and diffusion of universities of the continent, the european convents and cloisters were the centers of medical knowl-edge and -practice for centuries. Alongside the scholarly development of medical science, driven from the roots of the eldest scholarly medicial practice, the practice of folk-medicin flourished and thrived all over Europe, not least the herbal-medicine which is the original form and foundation for modern pharmacy. This article deals with the conjunction of religion, magic and medical practice in ancient Icelandic sources such as the Old-Norse literature, medical-scripts from the 12th - 15th century Iceland, and not least the Icelandic magical-scripts (galdrakver) of the 17th century. The last mentioned documents were used as evidence in several witch-trials that led convicted witches to suffer executions at the stake once the wave of European witch-persecutions had rushed ashore in 17th century Iceland. These sources indicate a decline of medical knowledge and science in the 16th and 17th century Iceland, the medical practice being rather undeveloped at the time - in Iceland as in other parts of Europe - there-fore a rather unclear margin between "the learned and the laymen". While common people and folk-healers were convicted as witches to suffer at the stake for possession of magical scripts and healing-books, some scholars of the state of Danmark were practicing healing-methods that deserve to be compared to the activities of the former ones. That comparison raises an inevitable question of where to draw the line between the learned medical man and the magician of 17th century Iceland, that is between Magic and Science.

Solanaceae III: henbane, hags and Hawley Harvey Crippen.

Hyoscyamus, the henbane, is one of the drugs of the ancients. Initially used both as a poison and narcotic, it was widely adopted by witches, wizards and soothsayers as a component of their hallucinatory and flying ointments. It was also used by notorious poisoners such as Madame Voisin in France. Eventually, in the nineteenth century its active principle was isolated by Ladenburg and called l-hyoscine. It proved to be a tropane alkaloid very similar to atropine. These two alkaloids proved to be very important in the study of the parasympathetic component of the autonomic nervous system, and together with physostigmine, allowed the major neurotransmitter acetylcholine to be isolated and its mechanisms of action to be characterised. The Crippen murder case in 1910 gave hyoscine further fame, indeed, notoriety. The unassuming homeopathic doctor murdered his wife with the alkaloid and then decamped for Canada with his mistress Ethel Le Neve. The case became a worldwide sensation for several reasons: the arrest of the fugitive couple by wireless telegraphy (Marconigram) and the extensive chemical and histological evidence presented by Willcox and Spilsbury. Some authorities claim that this was the beginning of the science of forensic medicine in Britain. Hyoscine is now hardly ever used in modern therapeutics but its history from antiquity to the witches and on to Dr Crippen is both bizarre and fascinating.

Hybridising Medicine: Illness, Healing and the Dynamics of Reciprocal Exchange on the Upper Guinea Coast (West Africa).

The present article seeks to fill a number of lacunae with regard to the study of the circulation and assimilation of different bodies of medical knowledge in an important cultural contact zone, that is the Upper Guinea Coast. Building upon ongoing research on trade and cultural brokerage in the area, it focuses upon shifting attitudes and practices with regard to health and healing as a result of cultural interaction and hybridisation against the background of growing intra-African and Afro-Atlantic interaction from the fifteenth to the late seventeenth century. Largely based upon travel accounts, missionary reports and documents produced by the Portuguese Inquisition, it shows how forms of medical knowledge shifted and circulated between littoral areas and their hinterland, as well as between the coast, the Atlantic and beyond. It shows that the changing patterns of trade, migration and settlement associated with Mandé influence and Afro-Atlantic exchange had a decisive impact on changing notions of illness and therapeutic trajectories. Over the centuries, cross-cultural, reciprocal borrowing contributed to the development of healing kits employed by Africans and non-African outsiders alike, which were used and brokered by local communities in different locations in the region.

[Infinite metamorphosis: witches, spirits and apuntes in Havana]. / Metamorfose infinita: sobre brujos, espíritos e apuntes em Havana.

This article offers an alternative reading of Hampa afro-cubana: los negros brujos, by the Cuban Fernando Ortiz y Fernandes, and discusses the need to make the different ideas expounded by the author more complex. For this reason, it disputes the interpretations of some commentators influenced by his work. The article suggests some clues with regard to what Ortiz y Fernandes understood as forces capable of acting and manifesting themselves in the "bodies" of persons affected by the activities of those accused of being involved with magical practices and objects. It examines the creation of witches - as described by Ortiz y Fernandes - as an epistemic phenomenon and discusses the arguments and the practices and knowledge required for this purpose.

[Witch hunt and hypotheses loss]. / Von Hexenverfolgung und Hypothesenverlust.

At this time randomized controlled studies (RCT) in clinical trials usually have high quality. But this quality is only true for the included patients (intrinsic validity). It is common to generalize the results to more or less similar patients. This inductive method is prohibited in epistemology what is known for 250 years (D Hume, K R Popper). Therefore the external validity for the data of RCT is low. To solve this problem additional clinical and pathophysiological based data are necessary to generalize the results. Unfortunately RCT show less quality in their premises. This is partly due to the influence of the pharmaceutical industry. A loss of universality of the hypothesis for RCT decreases basically the extrinsic validity. The articles describe this problem with examples.