Syphilis, Puritanism and Witch Hunts: Historical Explanations in the Light of Medicine and Psychoanalysis with a Forecast about Aids PDF
Preview Syphilis, Puritanism and Witch Hunts: Historical Explanations in the Light of Medicine and Psychoanalysis with a Forecast about Aids
SYPHILIS, PURITANISM AND WITCH HUNTS By the same author SOCIAL SCIENCES AS SORCERY THE AFRICAN PREDICAMENT PARASITISM AND SUBVERSION IN LATIN AMERICA THE USES OF COMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY MILITARY ORGANISATION AND SOCIETY THE PROSPECTS OF A REVOLUTION IN THE USA MAX WEBER'S INSIGHTS AND ERRORS Syphilis, Puritanism and Witch Hunts Historical Explanations in the Light of Medicine and Psychoanalysis with a Forecast about Aids Stanislav Andreski Professor of Comparative Sociology Polish University in London Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-20375-8 ISBN 978-1-349-20373-4 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-20373-4 © Stanislav Andreski 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1989 All rights reserved. For information, write: Seholarly and Referenee Division, St. Martin's Press, Ine., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of Ameriea in 1989 ISBN 978-0-312-02702-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data Andreski, Stanislav. Syphilis, Puritanism, and witeh hunts: historieal explanations in the light of medicine and psyehoanalysis with a foreeast about AIDS / Stanislav Andreski. p. em. IncIudes index. ISBN 978-0-312-02702-5 1. Syphilis---Social aspeets---History-16th eentury. 2. Witeheraft-History-16th eentury. I. TitIe. RA644.V4A65 1989 306.4'61-de20 89-31763 CIP Contents List of Illustrations vi Foreword vii PART I: THE THESIS 1 Syphilis, Puritanism and Capitalism 3 2 Syphilis, Celibacy and Witch Hunts 21 PART 11: THE OEMONOLOGISTS' FASCINATION WITH LUST ANO DISEASE ILLUSTRATEO FROM THE SOURCES 3 Montague Summers' Compilations 87 4 Henri Boguet 92 5 Nicolas Remy 98 6 Francesco Guazzo 109 7 Pierre Oe Lancre 128 8 George Sinclair 131 9 Lodovico Sinistrari 132 THE APPENDICES 1 The Impact of Aids on Sodal Life: Possibilities and Likelihoods 149 2 Wickedness, Madness and Error: on the Limits of the Usefulness of Psychoanalysis in Historical Explanation 188 Postscript 203 Index 220 v List of Illustrations 'Off to the Sabbat' by Queverdo 'The Four Witches' by Albert Durer vi Foreword The explanatory thesis presented here was published in a briefer form as articles in Encounter. I thank its editor for agreeing in advance to their re-publication in a book. These articles have been revised and expanded. The bulkiest addition, however, consists of the extracts from treatises on demonology which furnish additional support for my arguments. The appendices have not been published before. They do not affect the explanatory thesis but deal with questions which arise from it. The first appendix has a direct bearing on the present situation as it contains a forecast of the social impact of Aids in the light of the his tory of older diseases. The second deals with more abstract problems and may be skipped by areader uninterested in philosophy and comparative sociology. It is a piece of good luck that the extracts from the sources are not only instructive but also amusing. vii Part One The Thesis 1 Syphilis, Puritanism and Capitalism Emile Durkheim's methodological rule that sodal phenomena must be explained in terms of other sodal phenomena was a useful corrective to the abuse of biological analogies in the sodology of his time. But as a rigidly applied limitation it is just as obscurantist as the superstition about 'the mode of production' as the final and irredudble cause of everything else. In the light of knowledge available today we might find the views of Montesquieu and Adam Ferguson on the influence of climate too simplistic; but it would be absurd to deny that climate affects the culture. Recently the ecological movement has drawn our attention to the various ways in which pollution might put an end to progress. A well-supported thesis (by Derek Bryce-Smith, Professor of Chemistry at Reading University) has been put forward that lead poisoning is an import- ant factor in the causation of juvenile delinquency. Here, accepting Weber's thesis that the puritanical ingredients of Protestantism constituted an essential factor in the development of capitalism, I shall try to trace the causation further back and inquire into the effects of another factor which might have constituted an equally crudal link, and which is neither religious nor economic but medical. In his recent pioneering masterpiece, Plagues and People,l the Chicago historian William McNeill has been able to explain a number of turning points of history which hitherto appeared as inexplicable. The Spaniards' extraordinary success in conquering central and southern America - and, even more, the unparalleled rapidity of the conversion of the Indians - lose their miraculous character in the light of what McNeill teIls us about the impact of the diseases (above all, smallpox and measles) brought from Europe. It seems justifiable to surmise that, seeing how they were succumbing to the disease which spared the Spaniards or at least afflicted them much less, the Indians would feel that their gods had either abandoned them or been overpowered by the mightier 3
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