place by their diseases. Several of these poor credulous people no sooner saw him than they fell into fits, and he restored them by waving his hand in their faces, and praying over them. Nay, he affirmed that the touch of his glove had driven pains away, and, on one occasion, cast out from a woman several devils, or evil spirits, who tormented her day and night. “Every one of these devils,” says Greatraks, “was like to choke her when it came up into her throat.” It is evident from this that the woman’s complaint was nothing but hysteria.
The clergy of the diocese of Lismore, who seem to have had much clearer notions of Greatraks’ pretensions than their parishioners, set their faces against the new prophet and worker of miracles. He was cited to appear in the Dean’s Court, and prohibited from laying on his hands for the future: but he cared nothing for the Church. He imagined that he derived his powers direct from heaven, and continued to throw people into fits, and bring them to their senses again, as usual, almost exactly after the fashion of modern magnetisers. His reputation became, at last, so great, that Lord Conway sent to him from London, begging that he would come over immediately to cure a grievous headache which his lady had suffered for several years, and which the principal physicians of England had been unable to relieve.