Syphilis, Puritanism and Witch Hunts: Historical Explanations in the Light of Medicine and Psychoanalysis with a Forecast about Aids

234 Pages·1989·21.44 MB·English

by  Stanislav Andreski (auth.)

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