ABSTRACT
As in other matters which have become topics of popular discussion, the term "Witchcraft" has assumed in the lay mind a narrow significance, out of keeping with what it actually represents in human thought. Hysteria, in the field of medicine, has occupied a very similar position. To the man in the street, it still signifies a trifling emotional disturbance, chiefly confined to women, as implied in its name, whereas the modern student finds it quite hopeless to delimit its boundaries or give it adequate definition. The tendency of late years has been to search at a deeper level for causes of disordered function, whether in the physical or mental sphere, with results, which are already showing themselves in broader generalisations and more comprehensive conceptions of both normal and pathological activities. The discovery of a definite etiological factor, such for example, as the tubercle bacillus of Koch, or the spirochaeta pallida of Schaudinn, not only throws light on the individual forms of disease, but, much more important, gives us a clear conception of interrelationships. Bone disease and lung disease are brought into a common category, or brain disease {e.g., dementia paralytica) and certain alterations in the skin, into a like unity, through the acceptance of a common principle, which exerts its influence in outwardly devious ways, depending upon the type of tissue attacked. This principle, though naturally with less precision, may be applied to the strange phenomena which have been rather loosely classified as "witchcraft." Until some such basic etiologic factor is supplied, any adequate understanding of the manifold vagaries of the mind in the realm of the supernatural, whether under the name of witchcraft or not, is beyond our reach.
