Demonic Possession in China.
The Chinese system of treating possession is in accord with their beliefs regarding it. A priest is called in who makes use of one or several of the following means : sacrifice, chants from the sacred books, prayer, offerings of money, begging or exorcism, magic spells, incantations ; or by pinching, sticking with needles, by the use of peach or willow branches, charmed water and other similar means he drives out the spirit and confines it. If the priest-doctor fails they resort to spiritism and all its attendant phenomena of rappings, table tipping, planchette writing; and revelations of suitable charms or remedies to be used are as familiar to them as to our spirit mediums and our Indian medicine men. Confucianists, Taoists and Buddhists alike make use of such means.
Of recent years Christian converts have been most successful in casting out these spirits by prayer and in the name of Jesus. In many cases a profession of faith is said to have been sufficient to relieve the sufferer of all further trouble. Space forbids the quoting of any of the numerous detailed descriptions of individual cases given by Nevins, interesting as they are as data for a study of comparative psychology and pathology. But one may say that almost every phase of the so-called "demon" possession of China, as it appears in the descriptions of Dr. Nevins, can be paralleled in any large institution for the insane. Any one who has had experience even in clinical demonstrations with such patients must at once admit the similarity.
The periodic recurrence of attacks, the phenomena of double personality, sudden outbreaks of mania and as sudden returns to apparent normality, changes in voice, peculiar losses of control over the natural movements, or variations by habit or fixed ideas of functions naturally reflex, as breathing, etc., peculiar claims to and even real possession of unusual powers, -- all these and many more of the manifestations we find repeated in every insane hospital. The differences are practically nil except those due to religious beliefs, superstitions, and race characteristics shown equally well in normal individuals.
A more careful study of demonology in a comparative way by men of anthropological and psychological training will no doubt make a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the human mind and its variation under environment, education, and the influence of dominating religious and superstitious ideas, but there can be no question that it will be termed simple insanity.
Miracles of Healing
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By Charles W. Waddle (1909)
Primitive Christian Worship
Hereditary genius
