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This cerebral anæmia produces a transformation of character, demonomaniacal hallucinations, and very violent nocturnal, perhaps also diurnal, states of anxiety. Demonomania and the self-reproaches of the day can be traced to the influences of religious education which the subject underwent as a child.
They continued free from the hallucinations for two years, when first the mother, and then gradually all the other members of the family, again became afflicted with demonomania and were again sent to the asylum, when, after a residence therein of five months, they were all sufficiently cured to return home.
For a detailed account of it see the "Dictionary of Psychological Medicine" under the heading "Demonomania." The Varieties of Religious Experience; William James p. 228. "Nevroses et Idees Fixes" Vol. I, p. 377. In many ways our case differs from cases of this type. An important difference was in the intermittent character of the symptoms.
The famous alienists of our time claim that analysis of the brain of an insane woman disclosed a lesion or a deterioration of the grey matter. And suppose it did! It would still be a question whether, in the case of a woman possessed with demonomania, the lesion produced the demonomania, or the demonomania produced the lesion.... Admitting that there was a lesion!
By and bye he passes into a state only to be described as acute Demonomania marked by maniacal outbreaks in which he cried out and blasphemed, lamenting in quieter intervals his powerlessness to resist the Devil who was, he believed, actually not figuratively within him, who spoke and blasphemed through him, prevented him sleeping, etc.
His heroes are little bourgeois petty officials, school-teachers, and country proprietors. This chanter of birth and death, disgusted by the banality of existence, has given us, under the title, "The Little Demon," a pathetic picture of human baseness and sordidness, which cannot be read without emotion. The atmosphere of an arbitrary regime engenders almost always "demonomania."
The minor 'phobias, such as pyrophobia, or fear of fire; stasophobia, or inability to arise and walk, the victims spending all their time in bed; toxicophobia or fear of poison, etc., will be left to the reader's inspection in special works on this subject. Demonomania is a form of madness in which a person imagines himself possessed of the devil.
Kronfeld, in a most valuable criticism, says that in comparison with Freud's conception of the vorconscious and its work, Henroth's Demonomania appears a modest scientific theory. The attitude of the Freudians is, itself, worth noticing. They are very prone to consider any criticism as very personal, and fly to the rescue with all the fervor of a religious fanatic.
We shall note that, as a consequence, there was an increase in the number of swimming ordeals and other illegal procedures. The story of the Lancashire demonomania is not unlike the story of William Somers in Nottingham a century before. In this case there was no John Darrel, and the exorcists were probably honest but deluded men.
I must be permitted to register clearly the general conviction that if black magic, sorcery, and the Sabbath up to date had been merely revived demonomania, had been merely concerned with the black paternoster, the black mass, or even with transcendental sensualism and the ordeal of the pastos, the Roman hierarchy would not have taken action as it has, nor would the witnesses concerning these things have been welcomed with open arms; as a fact, no interest whatsoever is manifested in the doings of diabolists who operate apart from Masonry.
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