Witches marks

Specters of mechanism continued to haunt twentieth-century horror films. Apart from the many versions of Frankenstein, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari 1919), Dr Cyclops (1940) and the three film versions of Wells The Island of Doctor Moreaf, the Romantic condemnation of rationalism and mechanism finds expression in numerous details. For example, we should know from film conventions that Dr Strangelove (1963) is suspect because his withered hand and his motorized wheelchair mark him as being cut off from Nature, just as, in medieval times, physical ugliness was believed to indicate the moral imperfection of alleged witches. 

The identity of witches was established by three principal methods confession, examination for witch s marks with or without pricking, and ordeal by water. We shall examine them separately and compare each to contemporary psychiatric methods of identifying mental patients. 

Besides eliciting confessions, the principal method for diagnosing witchcraft was to find witch s marks on the body of the accused. Witch s marks were supernumerary nipples, a common anatomical variation, slightly more frequent in men than women, or any kind of skin lesion, such as a birthmark, mole, scar, or hemangioma. The mark was thought to indicate the spot on which the possessor was branded by the devil, like an animal by its owner, and constituted proof of a pact between that person and Satan. This made it easy enough to diagnose almost anyone as a witch. 

Those not taken in by the witch mania recognized, of course, that these marks are both common and natural. Very few people in the world are without privy marks upon their bodies, as moles or stains, even such as witchmongers call the devil s privy marks, wrote Thomas Ady,i an English critic of witch-hunts, in 1656. ... 

A direct line of progression can be traced from the witch s marks to the so-called stigmata of the hysteric, and, most lately, to the signs which schizophrenics are made to reveal through projective... 

The fact that witch s marks were ubiquitous simplified the work of the diagnosticians of witchcraft. Witch-finders did not reject such diagnostic signs on this account any more than psychiatrists reject anxiety, depression, or suspiciousness, which are also ubiquitous, as diagnostic signs of mental illness. 

Visible witch s marks were, however, not the only signs of a pact with Satan. It was also believed that a person could be branded by the devil in such a way as to leave only an invisible mark upon his body. These spots were supposed to have been bloodless and insensitive to pain, and hence could be located only by what was called pricking. If a pin were stuck into such a spot, and it neither bled nor caused pain, the individual would be a witch. 

The witch mania provided much work for physicians who often were entrusted with locating witch s marks. The persecutions also spawned a new profession, witch-pricking—and a new professional, the witch-pricker, some of whom were physicians. 

The witch-finder s first task was to locate visible witch s marks. This explained the custom of shaving all hair off the suspect of witchcraft the mark might be located in a hairy area and only thus could it be exposed. If no mark was found, pricking was employed. 

The denunciation of persons as witches, their examination for witch s marks, and their torture to extract confessions, served only to secure their formal, legal definition as witches and to justify their sentencing, usually to death by burning at the stake. We are now ready to examine the witch trial and compare it with contemporary legal proceedings to establish a person s status as mentally ill. 

According to the Renaissance witch-hunter Guaccius, the witch s mark, imposed by the Devil, is designed to mock circumcision, the bodily mark which identifies the Satanic race of Jews. (Leschnitzer, The Magic Background of Modern Anti-Semitism, p. 223.)... 

Warts, surely, must be a misprint. Gould must mean witch s marks. And who will ascertain that the psychological testers and the interpreters of these dossiers of personal information will have no bad secrets to hide That is a foolish question. Modern physicians and psychiatrists are the perfect and infallible interpreters of Science and of Nature, just as Renaissance popes had been of the Bible and of God. ... 

The Rosenberg case helped mark the birth of a great anti-Communist fervor in American society. This campaign was punctuated by the witch hunts and fear mongering of the 1950s by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee... 

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