Plato gave the name of daemons to the benevolent spirits who regulated the universe. The Chaldeans and Jews considered them as the causes of all human maladies. Saul was agitated by an evil spirit, and Job and Joram suffered under a similar visitation. Daemonomania differs widely from the mental disease called Theomania. In the latter state of insanity the patient fancies that he is placed in communication with the Deity or his angels; in the former, he feels convinced that he has become the prey of the destroyer of mankind. Under the head of "Unlawful Cures," instances are related of the firm belief in the power of evil spirits to cause various diseases. Perhaps the origin of daemonomania may be traced to fanatical persecution; never was the malady so common as during the denunciations of Calvin, when torture was frequently resorted to, to make the victims of bigotry renounce a supposed pact with the devil. D'Agessau was right when, in advising the parliament of Paris to repeal all statutes against sorcery, he recommended that daemoniacs should be handed over to the physician, instead of the priest or the executioner. The sufferings which daemoniacs say they endure must be excruciating; so powerful is moral influence over our physical sensations. They will tell you that the devil is drawing them tight, and suffocating them with a cord; that he is pinching and lacerating their entrails, burning and tearing their heart, pouring hot oil or molten lead in their veins, while internal flames are consuming them. Their strength is exhausted, their digestive functions impaired, their appearance soon becomes miserable in the extreme, their countenances pale and haggard: the wretched creatures endeavour to conceal themselves during their scanty meals, or their attempts to enjoy a broken slumber; they are persuaded that they no longer possess a corporeal existence that requires refection or repose,--the evil spirit has borne away their bodies, the devil requires no earthly support; they even deny their sex: they are doomed to live for ever in constant agony. These unfortunate creatures are mostly women. One of them asserts, with horrid imprecations, that she has been the devil's wife for a million of years, and had borne him a numerous family; her body is nothing but a sack made of a devil's skin, and filled with their offsprings in the shape of devouring snakes, toads, and venomous reptiles. She exclaims that her husband constantly urges her to commit murder, theft, and every imaginable crime; and sometimes with bitter tears supplicates her keeper to put on a strait waistcoat, to prevent her from doing evil. Another woman, forty-eight years of age, assures us that she has two devils who have taken up their residence in both her hips, and have grown up to her ears: one of them is black and yellow, the other black, both in the shape of cats. She fills her ears with snuff and grease to satisfy their diabolical cravings.