Demonology, neurology, and medicine in Edwardian Britain.
Bulletin of the history of medicine January 1, 2004 Rhodri Hayward
The long-held story of a conflict between demonology and psychiatry is a foundational myth. Nineteenth-century psychiatrists like Charcot and Maudsley pathologized religious experience, and modern historians see this as a professionalization strategy. But these accounts wrongly treat demonology as passive and medicine as active. Examining early twentieth-century demonological literature shows a different picture: fundamentalists and Pentecostalists developed sophisticated models of normal and pathological spiritual experience, drawing on medical sources from germ theory to neurology. The article reveals contested biomedical innovation through points of contact between medical and demonological communities.