Over the past twenty-five years, Davies has showed in a large outpouring of impressive books that magic, otherworldly experiences, demonic possession, visions, and other unexplained phenomena previously identified as superstitious have continued from the eighteenth century in the lives of many who live in “modern” Britain, Europe, and America. These instances are not mere “survivals,” nor do they represent the “re-enchantment” of the West. They have been there all along.
The first half of this book examines the writings and attitudes of the medical establishment and of asylum administrators, mainly British but also French and American, who came to dominate nineteenth-century discourse about “insanity” to a degree that we rarely recognize today. Many of these men were eager to explain away the history of witchcraft and modern examples of demons and the supernatural as symptoms of disordered medical conditions. From this point of view, the historical witches were not guilty...