Cure there was none, or at least no certain cure. Sometimes sudden terror or sudden joy availed to drive out the unclean spirit. I have heard of one Joachim the son of Levi, that was vexed with a dumb spirit for many years; but seeing some robbers about to kill his father, the string of his tongue was unloosed, and he cried out to them not to kill him. But no physic, nor no diet, was of any certain avail. This uncertainty brought great gain to many vagrant exorcists which wandered here and there throughout Galilee, their scrips full of amulets, charms, drugs, magic roots, and books of incantations. These men, with shouts and shrieks and uncouth gestures and dances, were wont to amaze the demoniacs for a time and to drive them into a kind of torpor; which torpor they called health and peace, and boasted that they had wrought a cure. At other times, by magic arts, they would persuade Satan to go out of the man for a short time, that they might obtain a reward. But in either case, the cure lasted no long time. For in a brief space the demon would awake again out of torpor; or if he had been driven out, he would return, and sometimes bring with him other demons yet more powerful than himself; insomuch that it was a proverb among us that it was better for a possessed person that the unclean spirit should not be driven out at all, than that, having been driven out, he should be allowed to return. But about the causes and cures of this evil let others consider and dispute: I speak now of the exorcist in Capernaum. Going down straightway with Baruch, I followed him into a house not two hundred paces from the quay. When we entered, there seemed scarce space for the exorcist and the demoniac in the middle of the chamber, so thick stood the people together; but by favour of the master of the house, who was known to Baruch, we obtained place in the inner part of the circle. The father of the boy now came up to my cousin. “I have taken Raphael,” he said, “to many exorcists before, but never a man of them was to be compared with this learned man. I have described to him the nature of the unclean spirit that possesseth my son, and he protesteth to me that he hath frequently driven out the like kind of demons, and that he is assured of success.” Meanwhile Raphael, the boy possessed with the unclean spirit, was seated on the ground in the middle. He no longer struggled nor shrieked, but sat quiet, though sullen withal.