Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/106

is this very department of mental diseases. This is all the more curious when we reflect, what occult influences have been, in all ages, supposed to work upon the insane. The obnoxious word 'lunatic' is a proof of this. The moon was by some supposed to have a deleterious effect on the intellect; insane persons were spoken of as 'moonstruck'; the periodicity of the mental attacks was also supposed to have some relation to the lunar interval. Indeed, the whole subject of insanity bristles with occult and mysterious theories. The really hopeful treatment of insanity began when it—a mental disease—was treated, not by mental, but by physical methods, and the more mental and physical are taken together as one and the same, the more rational and productive of good, in the best sense, is our treatment likely to be. Indeed, the whole indivisibility of the three systems is nowhere so well shown as in the arbitrary division of Religious Insanity. Surely if we try to turn the minds of the sufferers from any considerations of religion, by removing their Bibles, by preventing them from any religious discussion, or from taking part in any religious ceremonies, we are helping to keep up the evil. People, as we put it, become insane on religious matters, not only because they have been dwelling on