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with the Oriental influences that began to prevail about the time of the birth of Christ; but to the early Christians, a demon was a demon, and Plato's, good or bad, were pagan, and therefore devils. The Greek word "epilepsy" is itself a survival of the old belief, fossilized in a word, since its literal meaning refers to the SEIZURE of the patient by evil spirits. From all these sources, but especially from our sacred books and the writings of Plato, this theory that mental disease is caused largely or mainly by Satanic influence passed on into the early Church. In the apostolic times no belief seems to have been more firmly settled. The early fathers and doctors in the following age universally accepted it, and the apologists generally spoke of the power of casting out devils as a leading proof of the divine origin of the Christian religion. This belief took firm hold upon the strongest men. The case of St. Gregory the Great is typical. He was a pope of exceedingly broad mind for his time, and no one will think him unjustly reckoned one of the four Doctors of the Western Church. Yet he solemnly relates that a nun, having eaten some lettuce without making the sign of the cross, swallowed a devil, and that, when commanded by a holy man to come forth, the devil replied: "How am I to blame? I was sitting on the lettuce, and this woman, not having made the sign of the cross, ate me along with it."(345) (345) For a striking statement of the Jewish belief in diabolical interference, see Josephus, De Bello Judaico, vii, 6, iii; also his Antiquities, vol. viii, Whiston's translation. On the "devil cast out," in Mark ix, 17-29, as undoubtedly a case of epilepsy, see Cherullier, Essai sur l'Epilepsie; also Maury, art. Demonique in the Encyclopedie