In the most notorious of judicial murders, we read that the judges had some difficulty owing to a disagreement between the witnesses. This rarely troubled the witch-hunters. At Lindheim a woman was accused of having dug up and carried off the body of an infant, which, under torture, she admitted, denouncing four others as her accomplices. But on the grave being opened, the body was found uninjured. The inquisitors at once decided that this must be a delusion of the devil, and all five women were burned. A man confessed, under torture, that he was a were-wolf, and in that form had killed a calf belonging to a neighbour; the latter, however, said he had never lost a calf, though two or three years ago two hens had disappeared, he believed through witchcraft. The accused was burnt, for what need had they of witnesses? Had they not heard his confession?[300] It was even laid down as a principle that doubtful points must be decided ‘in favour of the faith’--in other words, against the accused. ‘If a sorcerer retracts his denunciations at the stake, it is not void, for he may have been corrupted by friends of the accused. Also when witnesses vary, as they often do, the positive assertion is always to be believed,’ says Bishop Covarivias, a prominent member of the Council of Trent. In which he is supported by the jurist Menochius of Padua, ‘ne tam horrendum crimen occultum sit’. Anything might start a witch-hunting, and once started it increased like an avalanche. If an old woman happened to be out of doors in a thunder-storm; if the winter was prolonged; if there was a more than usual number of flies and caterpillars; if a woman had a spite against her neighbour, some one might be denounced and forced in turn to denounce others. The prolonged winter of 1586 in Savoy, for instance, resulted in the burning of 113 women and two men, who confessed, after torture, that it was due to their incantations. It is thus not difficult to understand how, in the diocese of Como, witches were burnt for many years at an average rate of 100 per annum; how in that of Strassburg 5,000 were burnt in twenty years, 1615-35; how in the small diocese of Neisse 1,000 suffered between 1640-50, insomuch that they gave up the stake and pile as being too costly, and roasted them in a specially prepared oven; and how the Protestant jurist Benedict Carpzov could boast not only of having read the Bible through fifty-three times, but also of having passed 20,000 death sentences, chiefly on witches and sorcerers.[301] One of Carpzov’s victims is specially interesting to medical men, the Saxon physician, Dr. Veit Pratzel, who on one occasion (1660) produced twenty mice by sleight of hand in a public-house, probably for the sake of advertisement. He was denounced as a sorcerer, tortured and burnt, while his children were bled to death in a warm bath by the executioner, lest they should acquire similar diabolical powers.[302]