ABSTRACT
THE problem of mental subnormality is not new, for history and literature are full of references to individuals who were considered incapable of participating in ordinary life on account of their ‘dull wits’. Before the advent of modern medical science, medical abnormalities of all kinds were explained in terms of the intervention of supernatural forces, this being particularly true in the case of what would now be termed psychotic illness. But epilepsy was also interpreted as spirit possession, whether by good or evil spirits depending upon the social context, and gross physical deformities such as dwarfism or hydrocephalus could be explained in folk law by the activities of witches and demons in working spells or leaving changeling children in the night.
