Mental pain is just as violent as physical pain. Even men of science used terms typical of demonology to describe the symptoms of mental illness. In Italy, doctors Giuseppe Chiap and Fernando Franzolini referred to delusional convulsions as “diabolical obsessions”, while in France, Jean-Martin Charcot, the director of the clinic of nervous diseases at the Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, described hysterical attacks as “demonic possession”. 

In 1881, his assistant, Doctor Paul Richer, used the following words to describe one such case: “The patient tries to bite herself or scratch her face or breast, she tears out her hair, strikes herself violently, shrieks terribly in pain or makes sounds like a wild animal”. A description that perfectly echoes the words used to describe the Furies in The Divine Comedy: “Each Fury tore her breast with taloned nails; each, with her palms, beat on herself and wailed so loud...” (Inferno IX, 49–50).