SOURCE: "Agrippa and the Beginning of Psychiatry," in Magic, Myth and Medicine, The World Publishing Company, 1956, pp. 85-92.

Atkinson explores the influence of Agrippa's ideas in the formation of attitudes toward the treatment of mentally ill patients.

Only in recent years has man been able to banish a fear of the unseen which for thousands of years had kept him in perpetual torment. Everywhere about him in the long ago were disembodied spirits, evil, malicious, and cunning. Invisible forms, lurking in every shadow, were thought to be ready to hurl at him some great and terrible misfortune. From the storm reached the outstretched hands of the denizens of the unseen world, and malignant spirits, bent upon his undoing, leered at him from the lightning's flash. Witches with burning eyes cast malevolent glances from the darkness as they swung through the air on unholy errands bent, and salamanders, wreathing...