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  • Title: [Witch trials in the Salem as a medical error. Witch hunts in the XVII century and the medical art].
    Author: Werner W.
    Journal: Med Nowozytna; 2005; 12(1-2):5-17. PubMed ID: 17144196.
    Abstract:
    That article concerns with the influences of medical practitioners in witch hunts in the Salem (1692). Witch trials in England and English colonies in the XVII century were mainly criminal trials. Witchcraft had been there considered principally as a crime-tool rather then the crime itself. Witches were usually accused of crimes such as the murder and the disease sending. Physicians normally played in that situations the role of court experts. They decided if analyzed disease had normal or abnormal, artificial origin. In the Salem an medical practitioner judged that an illness which touched some children had come from the acts of sorcery. That was the beginning of a long and bloody witch hunt. Death sentences in the Salem trial were also justified with applying medical and physical categories to show the objectivity of a witchcraft. Salem judges were sure that by using "objective" categories they had been able to proof the existence of material relations between the witch and bewitched persons without the possibility of error.
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