Weyer was the first European physician to take an empirical, scientific approach to the study of mental illness. At the height of the witchcraft delusion he argued that witches were mentally ill women who deserved humane treatment instead of torture and punishment. Weyer “reduced the clinical problems of psychopathology to simple terms of everyday life and everyday, human, inner experiences” (Zilboorg). English translation by John Shea as Witches, devils, and doctors in the Renaissance. Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum. Foreward by John Weber. Bingham, New York: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991.