“It seems that a certain friar had preached a sermon during Lent, upon the state of the woman mentioned in Scripture possessed with seven devils, with so much eloquence and unction, that a simple countryman who heard him went home, and became persuaded that seven devils had got possession of him. The idea haunted his mind, and subjected him to the most dreadful terrors; till, unable to bear his sufferings, he unbosomed himself to his ghostly father, and asked his counsel. The father, who had some smattering of science, bethought himself, at last, of a way to rid the honest man of his devils and his money together. He told him it would be necessary to combat with the devils singly, and, on the day appointed, when the poor man came with a sum of money--without which the good father told him the devil never could be dislodged--he bound the chain connected with an electrical machine in an adjoining chamber round his body--lest, as he said, the devil should fly away with him--and, having warned him that the shock would be terrible when the devil went out of him, he left him praying devoutly before an image of the Madonna; and after some time, gave him a pretty smart shock, at which the poor wretch fell insensible on the floor from terror. As soon as he recovered, however, he protested that he had seen the devil fly away out of his mouth, breathing blue flames and sulphur, and that he felt himself greatly relieved. Seven electrical shocks at due intervals having extracted seven sums of money from him, together with the seven devils, the man was cured, and a great miracle performed! “To us this transaction seemed a notable piece of credulous superstition on the one hand, and fraudulent knavery on the other; but to our friend the abate, it only seemed an ingenious device to cure of his fears a simpleton, over whose mind reason could have no power--as the physician cured a lady who fancied she had a nest of live earwigs in her stomach, not by arguing with her on the absurdity of such a notion, but by showing her that an earwig was killed by a single drop of oil, and making her swallow a quantity of it. “But with respect to the man and his devils, I would ask, why inspire superstitious terrors to conquer them by deceit, and why make him pay so much money? Yet this is nothing to other things that are of daily occurrence.”