At the same epoch, in the space of two years, 1598 to 1600, we can count the number of poor wretches of the Jura, whose poverty compelled them to beg nourishment, and who were almost all condemned to death as Demonidolators and lycanthropes. Ready and only too willing to leave this world, these poor people answered all questions as to accusation in the affirmative, and went to death with the greatest indifference. The infamous prosecutor, Bouget, who was sent into the Jura as a criminal agent, boasted that he had executed alone more than six hundred of these innocents. The Inquistorial terror then reigned supreme; and it was only with extreme difficulty, at that time, that a poor idiot, named Jacques Roulet, condemned to death as a lycanthrope by the criminal Judge of Angers, was placed in an asylum for idiots, by order of the Parliament of Paris; this, too, in the seventeenth century. THE HYSTERO-DEMONOMANIA OF THE CLOISTER. The demonomaniacal hysteria of the Cloister, of which we have enumerated a few examples of a most remarkable kind, was present, in the Middle Ages, in the form of an epidemic neurosis, characterized by complex disturbances of the nervous system between the life of relation and of organic life; that is to say, by functional symptoms dependent on the general sensibility of the organs of sense, the active organs of movement, and the intelligence. In our observations we shall consequently recognize: _Hyperæsthesia and spasm of the stomach and abdominal organs_, in the hallucination of poisoning by witches. _Hyperæsthesia of the ovary and the uterus and vagina_, from the hallucination of painful cohabitation with incubi. _Spasms of the pharynx and laryngeal muscles_: coughs, screams and barks of the prodromic period to convulsive attacks. _Vaso-motor disturbances_, in the cutaneous marks, which are attributed to the Devil, but are simply produced by contact with some foreign body. _Somnambulism_, in the execution of movements (sometimes in opposition with the laws of equilibrium), in a lucid state of mind, outside the condition of wakefulness, with or without mediumistic faculties and the conservation of memory; in the perception of sensations, without the intervention of the senses; in sensorial hallucinations produced by a simple touch; in _ecstasy_, with loss of tactile sense and hallucinations of vision.[75] _Suggestion_, unconsciously provoked in rapid modifications of sensibility, in alterations of motility, in automatic movements executed in _imitation_ (_one form of suggestion_), or by the domination of a foreign willpower, and, in general, _in the penetration of an idea or phenomenon into the brain_, by word, gesture, sight, or thought.[76] _Catalepsy_, in the immobility of the body, the fixity of the regard, and the rigidity of the limbs in all attitudes, that we desire to place them (_a very rare_ phenomenon).