Medicines there were indeed for the insane patients, and some of them might have added to the witches’ cauldron.[625] Among the less nauseous of these came wolf’s and lion’s flesh,[626] and as our Saxon forefathers were skilled herbalists, we find the clovewort, polion, and peony recommended,[627] also the mandrake, round which many stories were woven from its resemblance to the human form. They said: “For witlessness, that is, for devil sickness or demoniacal possession, take from the body of the same wort mandrake by weight of three pennies, administer to drink in warm water as he may find convenient; soon he will be healed.”[628] Doubtless in all civilisations the more acutely insane would have to be a care for the community.[629] The early Christians tended them in their churches, in which they stood in a special part,[630] and where they were provided with food “while they abode in the church, which, it seems, was the chief place of their residence and habitation.”[631] The monks to some extent looked after them in their monasteries.[632] But whatever medicines or other remedies they may have employed, the main idea of those days about lunacy was that it came through demoniacal possession. The object was to drive the devils out. To accomplish this they seem to have resorted to all sorts of incongruous “cures,” both ghostly and physical.[633] The great spiritual weapon has always been exorcism. This was the primal art of all religions, and it was practised also by the early Christians. In the third century the exorcists were formed into a special order.[634] “When an exorcist is ordained,” we read, “he shall receive at the hands of the bishop a book wherein the forms of exorcism are written. These forms were certain passages together with adjurations in the name of Christ commanding the unclean spirit to depart out of the possessed person.” This custom has continued through the centuries,[635] forming the subject of innumerable legends and pictures relating to saints and teachers in the middle ages; and though the practice seems to be in abeyance,[636] the old idea of exorcism is not dead. We must perceive this when we read,[637] for instance, “Water and salt are exorcised by the priest, and so withdrawn from the power of Satan, who, since the Fall, has corrupted and abused even inanimate things.[638] But besides the weapons, mystic and spiritual, employed by the Church, were others of a more corporeal character.