The book—­Demon Possession in China—­of Dr. Nevius, for forty years a missionary, was violently attacked by the medical journals of his native country, the United States.  The doctor had the audacity to declare that he could find no better explanation of the phenomena than the theory of the Apostles—­namely, that the patients were possessed.  Not having the fear of man before his eyes, he also remarked that the current scientific explanations had the fault of not explaining anything.

For example, ’Mr. Tylor intimates that all cases of supposed demoniacal possession are identical with hysteria, delirium, and mania, and suchlike bodily and mental derangements.’  Dr. Nevius, however, gave what he conceived to be the notes of possession, and, in his diagnosis, distinguished them from hysteria (whatever that may mean), delirium, and mania.  Nor can it honestly be denied that, if the special notes of possession actually exist, they do mark quite a distinct species of mental affection.  Dr. Nevius then observed that, according to Mr. Tylor, ‘scientific physicians now explain the facts on a different principle,’ but, says Dr. Nevius, ’we search in vain to discover what this principle is.’[6] Dr. Nevius, who had the courage of his opinions, then consulted a work styled ‘Nervous Derangement,’ by Dr. Hammond, a Professor in the Medical School of the University of New York.[7] He found this scientific physician admitting that we know very little about the matter.  He knew, what is very gratifying, that ‘mind is the result of nervous action,’ and that so-called ‘possession’ is the result of ’material derangements of the organs or functions of the system.’

Dr. Nevius was ready to admit this latter doctrine in cases of idiocy, insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria; but then, said he, these are not what I call possession.  The Chinese have names for all these maladies, ’which they ascribe to physical causes,’ but for possession they have a different name.  He expected Dr. Hammond to account for the abnormal conditions in so-called possession, but ‘he has hardly even attempted to do this.’  Dr. Nevius next perused the works of Dr. Griesinger, Dr. Baelz, Professor William James, M. Ribot, and, generally, the literature of ’alternating personality.’  He found Mr. James professing his conviction that the ‘alternating personality’ (in popular phrase, the demon, or familiar spirit) of Mrs. Piper knew a great deal about things which Mrs. Piper, in her normal state, did not, and could not know.  Thus, after consulting many physicians, Dr. Nevius was none the better, and came back to his faith in Diabolical Possession.  He was therefore informed that he had written ’one of the most extraordinarily perverted books of the present day’ on the evidence of ’transparent ghost stories’—­which do not occur in his book.

The attitude of Dr. Nevius cannot be called strictly scientific.  Because pathologists and psychologists are unable to explain, or give the modus of a set of phenomena, it does not follow that the devil, or a god, or a ghost, is in it.