Johann Weyer and the Witches

Abstract

THOUGH the belief in witches and the resultant witch-hunts of the sixteenth century represent mass delusion and mass psychosis to modern physicians, four hundred years ago witches were an article of faith for Protestants and Catholics alike and, as such, within the province of the ecclesiastic authorities. Therefore, the attempts of one physician to bring sanity and reason onto the scene were resented as a trespass into alien fields. The physician, a lone voice in a wilderness, was Johann Weyer, the "father of psychiatry."He was born, in 1515 or 1516, in Grave on the Maas, and is thus claimed . . .