From the psychological point of view perhaps the most instructive of all epidemics is the demonophobia or witchcraft mania which raged from the end of the fifteenth to the end of the seventeenth centuries. The savage’s fear of demons and of unseen supernatural agencies lurking in every forest and moor now took hold of the modern world and turned the people, not into brutes and devils as we figuratively say, but simply into the original savages from which they came, whose basal instincts they still carried in their lower nervous centers, to be brought out under the influence of a social craze. The ecclesiastical authorities, both Roman and Protestant, led in this homicidal frenzy, while sedate judges, learned jurors and wise legislators lent their zealous aid. It spread in true epidemic form all over the Continent and into England and Scotland, even to America. Distinguished jurists declared that ordinary methods of trial should not be used for this offence, for so difficult is it to bring proof of the crime of witchcraft, that out of a million of witches not one could be convicted if the usual course of justice were followed. One contemporary of undoubted authority wrote that he saw a list of three thousand witches that had been put to death during the time of the Long Parliament alone. In this reign of demonophobia the psychological phenomena of the craze are well illustrated. The exciting cause was a widespread contagious and epidemic fear. The result was a recrudescence of the barbaric instincts of cruelty, torture and homicide, accompanied by a loss not merely of reasoning power, but apparently of common sense, so that intelligent men seemed to believe that old women blasted the crops in the fields and the offspring of animals, and raised storms and whirlwinds. The cruelty characteristic of the savage is again noticed in this case. In the witchcraft persecutions, the victims were commonly weak women, particularly the more helpless old and young, while the character of the inflictions was such as is peculiar to primitive people, viz., torture and burning alive. The perfidy of the savage is also noticed, as in innumerable instances the victims were led to believe that they would be spared if they made a confession, and were then put to death. To elude a legal requirement that torture should not be repeated, the most horrible tortures were ‘continued’ from day to day.