It is obvious from the above cases that the main cause of the continuance of the witch-burnings, and of the number of the victims, was the use of torture to obtain denunciations. The instances in which insane persons accused themselves or others seem to have been fewer than we might have expected. Then, as now, there were melancholics who thought they had committed the unpardonable sin, and in those days the unpardonable sin might be represented by an imaginary compact with the devil. Then, as now, the ‘mania of persecution’ was a prominent symptom in some forms of insanity, and the idea of being bewitched by some old woman corresponded to the modern dread of detectives, electric batteries, or telephones. Some of the supposed signs of witchcraft resemble those of mania and melancholia. Thus maniacs sometimes collect dirt for money, and witches often confessed that the devil’s money changed to dirt. Melancholics mutter to themselves, look on the ground, and avoid society, all of which were considered signs of witchcraft. But then red hair and left-handedness were no less infallible indications. Insanity and crime were indeed present at the witch trials, but they were at least as obvious in the accusers and judges as in the victims, and the first man who was bold enough to say so was Dr. John Weyer. Though a few feeble protests may have been made by others, it was from the medical profession that the first determined opposition came. Mystics like Paracelsus and Cardan might encourage the superstition; pious and able members of the profession like Ambroise Paré and Sir Thomas Brown might give it their sanction, but it was the physician Cornelius Agrippa who first successfully defended a witch at the risk of his own life,[316] and it was his pupil John Weyer who first declared open war against the witch-hunters and invoked the vengeance of heaven upon their atrocities. ‘The feareful abounding at this time in this countrie of those detestable slaves of the divell, the witches or enchanters hath moved me (beloved reader) to dispatch in post the following treatise of mine, not in any wise (as I protest) to serve for a shewe of my learning and ingine, but only (moved of conscience to preasse thereby) so far as I can, to resolve the doubting hearts of manie both that such assaults of Satan are most certainly practised, and that the instruments thereof merit most severely to be punished, against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to denie that there can be such a thing as witchcraft and so maintains the old error of the Sadduces in denying of spirits, the other called Wierus, a German physition sets out a publike apologie for all these crafts-folks, whereby procuring for their impunity, he plainly bewrayes himself to have been of that profession.’