Mr. DePaul was such a good teacher as far as high school social studies were concerned. I always found his class very interesting. I still remember the time when he talked about looking at the diaries and letters handwritten by pioneer women and men, now donated and stored away in the university library and brought out only to be perused by qualified persons doing valuable historical research. He talked about how fascinating it was to have the actual primary documents in one's hand, with the actual words of the persons in question being almost the only thing left of them, almost the only record that exists of historical events such as, for example, the Donner Pass excursion which came to such dire straits. Yes, I suppose it could be interesting. Back in those 1970s nobody could find the primary documents so I really wouldn't know what he was talking about. Nowadays it is interesting to see that many of these documents are now online and accessible to the general public, to persons not qualified to digest the historical research but who find it interesting and helpful for their personal project of some sort. Take for example the witchcraft collection at Cornell University. No longer do researchers have to travel to New York to find the evidence of centuries past. There it is, a gold mine of useful information handed down by the unnamed physician of Hertfordshire in a letter to his friend, "A Full Confutation of Witchcraft."
The doctor says: "A learned man at Paris was accused of magic, for printing a commentary on the Tenth Book of Euclid; and a Norman gentleman observing from the barometer, that it would not be long before it rained, got his hay mowed whilst the fine weather lasted, which made the country people report, he held a correspondence with the Devil. The water experiment to try witches, is the most fallacious of any, so is that of Marks about the body: a mole or wart, or any excrescency, passing current for the stamp of the Devil. It would be endless to recount the several idle tokens the country people have of witchcraft, and not one of them with the least shadow of reason."
Yes, and who was saying that my birthmark, a giant freckle on my arm, makes me of necessity some sort of witch? As if those "people" ever had anything intelligent to say! Ha!
The doctor describes the battle against witches as a struggle of genders, the male priest eclipsing the mean old woman witch, sort of ignoring the fact of male warlocks fattening their own wallets for no particular reason, especially in the days before Christ when pagan religions were mostly a channel of demonic activity.
The doctor is elaborating the story of Anne Thorn, a silly woman prone to having fits. Anne Thorn is the maid who concocts a bizarre and illogical story unsupported by the available witnesses when she is found sitting in front of the hearth in disarray, apparently with no clothes on, and confronted by Mrs. Gardiner, the woman of the house. It is thought by locals that Anne Thorn has been bewitched by Jane Wenham, a local person who calls herself a witch.
The doctor believes that Anne Thorn is merely a helpless lunatic.
The doctor says: "But one thing must not be omitted here, viz., that Anne Thorn never complained to these Divines, of the Devil's uneasiness at the frequent removes they gave him by prayer; or that Jane Wenham finding her power wasting by the frequent application of that lip salve, did not amongst other threatenings, warn Anne Thorn against this frequent prayer: No, we find her, by their own account, equally successful, and triumphing over their sham miracles, and themselves exposed as a company of raw artists."
