The following sketch is from Dow’s journal. In the year 1805 he preached at Knoxville, Tennessee, before the governor, when some hundred and fifty persons, among whom were a number of Quakers, had the jerks. “I have seen,” says the writer, “all denominations of religion exercised by the jerks—gentleman and lady, black and white, young and old, without exception. I passed a meeting-house, where I observed the undergrowth had been cut down for camp-meetings, and from fifty to a hundred saplings were left for the people who were jerked to hold by. I observed where they had held on they had kicked up the earth, as a horse stamping flies.”
A widely different picture to the above is given in a letter from the Earl of Shrewsbury to A. M. Phillips, Esq., published in 1841, and describing the state of two _religieuses_, (the Ecstatica of Caldaro, and the Addolorata of Capriana,) who were visited by members of their own communion, in the belief that they lay in a sort of heavenly beatitude. To this idea their stillness, the devotional attitude of their hands and expression of their countenances, together with their manifestation of miraculous intuition, contributed. But I am afraid that, to the eye of a physician, their condition would have been simple trance. However, while the absence of reasonable enlightenment in the display is to be regretted, one agreeably recognises the influence of the humanity of modern times. Had these young women lived two centuries ago, they would have been the subjects of other discipline, and their history, had I possessed it to quote, must have been transferred to the darker section which I have next to enter on.
The belief in possession by devils, which existed in the middle ages and subsequently, embraced several dissimilar cases. The first of them which I will exemplify would have included individuals in the state of the _religieuses_ described by Lord Shrewsbury. Behaviour and powers which the people could not understand, even if exhibited by good and virtuous persons, and only expressive of or used for right purposes, were construed into the operation of unholy influences. The times were the reign of terror in religion. I give the following instance:—Marie Bucaille, a native of Normandy, became, towards the year 1700, the subject of fits, which ordinarily lasted three or four hours. It appears, by the depositions of persons of character on her trial, that Marie had effected many cures seemingly by her prayers; that she comprehended and executed directions given to her mentally; that she read the thoughts of others. When in the fit, the Curé of Golleville placed in the hands of Marie a folded note. Without opening the note, she replied to the questions which it contained; and, without knowing the writer, she accurately described her person. Although Marie only employed her powers to cure the sick and in the service of religion, she was not the less condemned to death by the parliament of Valogne. The parliament of Rouen mitigated her punishment to whipping and public ignominy.