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George Miller Beard - The Psychology of the Salem Witchcraft Excitement of 1692 (2.1 MB)

Cover of George Miller Beard's Book The Psychology of the Salem Witchcraft Excitement of 1692Book downloads: 255
The psychology underlying the Salem witch trials in New England during the late 1600s stems from various Puritan and religious beliefs. Men like Cotton Mather and other clergy of New England believed that the spiritual and earthly realms intermingled. As such, many believed that Satan sent his minions in the form of witches and other entities to work his wiles on unsuspecting colonists. Coupled with this belief, Puritan leaders also felt they had the ability to determine the spiritual and earthly realms. This led such leade... More >>>Note that, unfortunately, not all my books can be downloaded due to the restrictions of copyright. However, most of the books on this site do not have copyright restrictions. If you find any copyright violation, please contact me at . I am very attentive to the issue of copyright and try to avoid any violations, but on the other hand to help all fans of magic to get access to information.
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Category 1:  Witch Hunts
Category 2:  Wicca and Witchcraft
Category 3: 
Author:      George Miller Beard
Format:      eBook
The psychology underlying the Salem witch trials in New England during the late 1600s stems from various Puritan and religious beliefs. Men like Cotton Mather and other clergy of New England believed that the spiritual and earthly realms intermingled. As such, many believed that Satan sent his minions in the form of witches and other entities to work his wiles on unsuspecting colonists. Coupled with this belief, Puritan leaders also felt they had the ability to determine the spiritual and earthly realms. This led such leaders to justify and vindicate the persecution of those suspected as witches, more often than not based solely on hearsay. As Becker (1915) maintains, this justification arose from a "vain and pathetic effort of single-minded men to identify the temporal and spiritual commonwealths". This psychology or worldview led to the persecution and death of many condemned as witches, even though little evidence existed proving such.

About Author:

George Miller Beard (May 8, 1839 - January 23, 1883) was an American neurologist who popularized the term neurasthenia, starting around 1869.

Beard was born in Montville, Connecticut on May 8, 1839, to Rev. Spencer F. Beard, a Congregational minister, and Lucy A. Leonard. Beard's mother died in 1842 and his father remarried the following year to Mary Ann Fellowes. He graduated from Yale College in 1862, and received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of New York in 1866. While still in medical school during the American Civil War, he served as an assistant surgeon in the West Gulf squadron of the United States Navy aboard the gunboat New London. After the war and graduation from medical school, he married Elizabeth Ann Alden, of Westville, Connecticut, on December 25, 1866.

He is remembered best for having defined neurasthenia as a medical condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depression, as a result of exhaustion of the central nervous system's energy reserves, which Beard attributed to civilization. Physicians who agreed with Beard associated neurasthenia with the stresses of urbanization and the increasingly competitive business environment. Stated simply, people were attempting to achieve more than their constitution could cope with. Typically this followed a short illness from which the patient was thought to have recovered.

One of the more unusual disorders he studied from 1878 onwards was the exaggerated startle reflex among French-Canadian lumbermen from the Moosehead Lake region of Maine, that came to be known as the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine. If they were startled by a short verbal command, they would carry out the instruction without hesitation, irrespective of the consequences. The studies stimulated further research by the military and Georges Gilles de la Tourette.

Beard was also involved extensively with electricity as a medical treatment, and published extensively on the subject. He was a champion of many reforms of psychiatry, and was a founder of the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. He also took an unpopular stance against the death penalty for persons with mental illness, going so far as to campaign for leniency for Charles J. Guiteau, the assassin of President James Garfield on the basis that the man was not guilty because of insanity.

Beard was a critic of Spiritualism which he wrote was one of history's greatest delusions. He published articles on anomalistic psychology such as The Psychology of Spiritism (1879) exposing the fraud of mediumship and describing its psychological basis.

He died on January 23, 1883 in New York City.

George Miller Beard Publications:

- A Practical treatise on sea-sickness (1881)
- American Nervousness, Its Causes and Consequences (1881)
- Neurasthenia (nerve exhaustion): with remarks on treatment (1879)
- Our home physician (1875)
- Medical and surgical cases treated by electricity (1874)
- Cases of Hysteria, Neurasthenia, Spinal Irritation, or Allied Affections (1874)
- Stimulants and Narcotics: Medically, Philosophically, and Morally Considered (1871)
- The medical use of electricity (1867)