Some of our laws against sorcery remained unrepealed a little more than forty years ago. The Irish law against sorcery was only repealed in 1831. So late as August, 1863, an old man of eighty was flung into a mill-stream in the parish of Little Hedingham, being what is called "swimming for a wizard," and he died of his maltreatment. One curious book on Demonology is entitled "An Account of Demoniacs, and the power of casting out Demons, both in the New Testament, and the four first Centuries," by William Whiston, M.A. (London, 1737, 8vo). He observes that "The symptoms of these demoniacal distresses were very different from the symptoms of other diseases, and even included wild raving, irregular convulsions of the body, unnatural contortions of the limbs, or dismal malady of the mind, and came upon the unhappy patients by terrible fits of paroxysms, to the amazement of the spectators, and the horrible affection of the possessed, and included the sorest illness and madness in the world." The same symptoms revived in the extraordinary epidemic called the _hystero-demonopathy_, which visited Morzine, in Savoy, in 1857. The persons afflicted were violently and unnaturally convulsed; now rushed phrenetically into the woods, or to the river, now were subject to fits of coma; were insensible to pain; believed themselves to be haunted by evil spirits; were violent, but in their violence injured no one; and exhibited generally symptoms not observed in any known disorder.[67] The people of Morzine believed themselves possessed by spirits of dead persons, a peculiarity which appears to have occurred in many cases during the prevalence of the epidemic. DEMON AND GOBLIN SUPERSTITIONS.