Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 January 2018
The Malleus Maleficarum, the standard textbook of medieval witch-hunting published in 1484 (2), already mentions that “an illusion of sight and touch can be caused … by the summoning to the fancy or imagination of certain forms and ideas latent in the mind”, and continues by saying that “(the fifth) method of delusion of the devil is by working in the imaginative power, and by a disturbance of the humours effecting a transmutation in the forms perceived by the senses”. This might be the first working hypothesis ascribing certain behavioural changes of an apparently schizophrenic nature to biochemical influences.
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