I cannot pass from this subject without doing honour to two men who abroad, no less than Reginald Scot in Britain, opposed the immolation of lunatics--Wierus, physician to the Duke of Cleves, who wrote a remarkable work in 1567, and appealed to the princes of Europe to cease shedding innocent blood; and Cornelius Agrippa,[50] who interfered in the trial of a so-called witch in Brabant, having sore contention with an inquisitor, who through unjust accusations drew a poor woman into his butchery, not so much to examine as to torment her. When Agrippa undertook to defend her, alleging there was no proof of sorcery, the inquisitor replied, "One thing there is which is proof and matter sufficient; for her mother was in times past burnt for a witch." When Agrippa retorted that this had reference to another person, and therefore ought not to be admitted by the judge, the inquisitor was equal to the occasion, and replied that witchcraft was naturally engrafted into this child, because the parents used to sacrifice their children to the devil as soon as they were born. On this Agrippa boldly exclaimed, "Oh, thou wicked priest, is this thy divinity? Dost thou use to draw poor guiltless women to the rack by these forged devices? Dost thou with such sentences judge others to be heretics, thou being a greater heretic than either Faustus or Donatus?" The natural consequence was that the inquisitor then threatened to proceed against the advocate himself as a supporter of witches; nevertheless, he continued his defence of the unhappy woman, who, whether a lunatic or not, was delivered, we read, by him "from the claws of the bloody monk, who, with her accuser, was condemned in a great sum of money, and remained infamous after that time to almost all men." Scot, who cites this case, shows great familiarity with examples of melancholy and delusion, and from his work have been derived many of the best known illustrations of the latter, including the delusions of being monarchs, brute beasts, and earthen pots greatly fearing to be broken. The old story of the patient who thought Atlas weary of upholding the heavens and would let the sky fall upon him, is narrated by this author, as well as that of the man who believed his nose to be as big as a house.