Demoniacal Epidemic in the SavoieSome time ago the papers reported an epidemic monomania that took place in the Savoie region and against which all the resources of medicine and religion failed to address. The only means that produced a more or less satisfactory result was the spreading of the individuals throughout several towns. With that in mind, we received the letter below from Captain B…, member of the Parisian Society of Spiritist Studies, currently living in Annecy:
“Annecy, March 7th 1862
Mr. President,
Willing to be useful to the Society I have the honor of sending you a brochure received from one of my friends, Dr. Caille, assigned by the minister to follow the enquiry carried out by Mr. Constant, inspector of the houses of the mentally ill, about the large number of cases of devil-mania observed in the Morzine neighborhood, Thonon county, High Savoie.
Still today that miserable population is under the influence of an obsession, despite the exorcisms, medical treatments, actions taken by the authorities and taking the patients to county hospitals. The number of cases has diminished a little bit but has not ceased and the illness is in a latent stay, so to speak.
With the objective of exorcizing those unfortunate people, mostly children, the priest has them sent to the church by strong men. He had just pronounced a few words in Latin when a terrifying scene took place: screams, fierce jerks and seizures, etc. to the point that the police and an arm regiment were called in to reestablish order. I could not obtain all the information that I wanted to send you today but the facts seemed serious enough to me and worthy of your examination.
Dr. Arthaud from Lyon, an alienist doctor, wrote a report to the medical society of that city published by the Gazette Médicale de Lyon and that you could obtain through your corresponding member there. We have two ladies from Morzine undergoing treatment in that city.
Dr. Caille concluded that there is an epidemic nervous infection in town that is resistant to any kind of treatment and also to exorcism. Only isolation produced good results.
All the unfortunate ones affected by the disease pronounce dirty words in their crisis: they jump prodigiously over tables; they climb on trees, roof tops and sometimes prophesize.
If similar facts have taken place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at monasteries and in the country side, it is no less certain that in our nineteenth century they offer the Spiritists a subject of study from the point of view of collective epidemic, generalizing and persisting for years, given that the first observed case happened five years ago.
It will be an honor to send you every document and piece of information that I can find.
Yours, etc. B.”
The two communications that follow about the subject were given by our customary Spirits at the Society:
“It is not doctors but magnetizers, spiritualists or spiritists that should have been sent to dissipate the legion of malevolent Spirits, misplaced in your planet. I say misplaced because they are just passing. However, the unfortunate population that was stained by their contact will suffer morally and physically.
Where is the remedy, you ask? It will leave by replacing the bad Spirits with the healthy contact from the good Spirits who will succeed them, like the dawn succeeds darkness. That poor population, unaware of any intellectual work, would not have gotten to know the intelligent communications and would not even have noticed them. The initiation and the inconveniences caused by that impure mob opens the otherwise shut eyes and the uproar, the acts of madness are only the prelude to the initiation, since everyone must enjoy the Spiritist light.
Do not be sorry for the cruel way that things develop. Everything has a useful objective and the sufferings must yield fecund results like the storms that destroy a crop here and fertilizes another one somewhere else.
Georges, medium Mrs. Costel
“The cases of devil-mania that now take place in the Savoie are also produced in other places, particularly in Germany and most importantly in the East. This abnormal fact is more normal than you think. In fact to a careful observer it reveals a situation analogous to the one that took place during the last years of Paganism. Everybody knows that when Christ, our beloved master, incarnated in the region of Judea taking the personality of Jesus, the carpenter, that region had been invaded by legions of bad Spirits that through possession, like in our days, they took over the most ignorant social classes; controlled the weakest and least advanced incarnate Spirits, in one word the simple people that watched the herds or who were dedicated to farming work.
Do not you see a great analogy in the reproduction of these identical phenomena of possession? Ah! There is a very profound teaching in this! From that you must conclude that the predicted times are even closer and that the Son of the Man will soon expel again the mob of impure Spirits that have taken Earth and revive the Christian faith, giving His high and divine sanction to the reassuring revelations and regenerative teachings of Spiritism.
Going back to the present cases of devil-mania it is necessary to remember that the scientists and doctors of the century of Augustus treated diseases according to the methods of Hippocrates, the unfortunate possessed of Palestine, and that their whole science failed before that unknown power.
Well! Still today all of your health inspectors; the most renowned doctors, wise professionals highly skilled in pure materialism, they also fail before that exclusively moral disease; before that exclusively spiritual epidemic.
But, never mind! My friends, you who were touched by the new grace, you must know how much these transient illnesses are curable by those who have faith. Thus, wait. Wait with confidence the return of the one who has already rescued humanity. Time is near. The precursor spirit is already incarnate. The complete development of this doctrine will soon be effective; this doctrine whose insignia is: there is no salvation but through charity!
Erastus, medium Mr. D’Ambel
From the preceding we must conclude that the illness is not physical but from an occult influence. We do not need much to believe this, given the testimony of a large number of identical isolated cases due to the same cause. A proof of that is the fact that the means taught by Spiritism were sufficient to stop the obsession.
Experience demonstrates that the evil Spirits not only act through minds but also upon the body with which they sympathize and use as if it were theirs. They provoke ridiculous actions, screams and confusing movements with the whole appearance of madness or those of the devil-mania.
The explanation to all that is found in The Medium’s Book, in the chapter about the obsession. In a future article we will mention a few facts that demonstrate that unequivocally. In fact it is a kind of madness considering that this name can be given to every abnormal state in which the mind does not act freely.
It is then necessary to distinguish between the pathological madness from obsession. The latter is produced by a disorganization of the organs associate to the manifestation of thoughts. We must notice that in such a state it is not the spirit that is mad since the faculties remain complete as demonstrated by observation. However, since the instrument for the manifestation of one’s mind the expression of the thoughts is then incoherent.
In the obsessive madness there is no organic defect. It is the spirit that is affected by the subjugation of an alien spirit that dominates and commands the other. In the first case it is necessary to try to cure the faulty organ; in the second case it is just a matter of freeing the dominated spirit from the unwelcome guest, recovering the patient’s freedom.
Similar cases are very frequent and are considered madness when in fact they are just obsessions to which moral means should be employed instead of showers. Due to the physical treatment and more importantly due to the contact with true mentally ill person, the obsessed have frequently acquired a real disease where there was none.
By opening new horizons to all sciences, Spiritism comes also to clarify the very obscure issue of mental diseases, indicating a cause that up until now was not taken into account, a real and evident cause, demonstrated by experience and whose truthfulness will later be acknowledged. However, how to convince about such a cause those who are always ready to send to the mad houses anyone who has the weakness of believing that we have a soul? How to convince them that the soul has a role in our vital functions, and that it outlives the body and can act upon the living beings?
Thank God the Spiritist ideas make more progress among medical doctors than one would expect, for the good of humanity, and then indications are that in a not so distant future Medicine will finally depart from a materialistic routine.
Once the isolated cases of physical obsession or subjugation are analyzed we see that, like a plague of grasshoppers, a herd of bad Spirits may descend upon a number of people, controlling them and producing a kind of moral epidemic.
Ignorance, weakness of the faculties, and a lack of intellectual culture nature offer them greater facilities and that is why they preferably act upon certain social classes although smart and enlightened persons may not always be immune.
As Erastus says, it is likely that an epidemic took place during Christ’s time and the Gospels frequently talk about that. However, why His word was sufficient to send the demons away? That demonstrates that the illness could only be cured by a moral influence. Now, who could deny the moral influence of Jesus? Nonetheless, some will say, exorcism that is a moral remedy was employed and no result obtained. If it produced nothing it means that the remedy was inefficient and another one must be evidently found. If you study Spiritism you will understand the reason. Only Spiritism can provide the means of combating the damages of such a nature by pointing to the true cause of the ailment.
But when we advise people to study it we mean a serious study and not browsing around with the hopes of finding a banal recipe to be used by the first one that shows up.
What happen in Savoie and calls people’s attention will possibly accelerate the time when the action of the invisible world will be recognized as being part of the phenomena of nature. Once arriving at that avenue science will hold the key to many mysteries and will witness the downfall of the most formidable barrie at restricts the circle of observation instead of enlarging it.
