"He has a diabolical sign!"

We're looking for Boblig from Edelstadt, but we probably have more of them here...

I wondered if anything similar had actually happened in history, and in the end I didn't have to go that far.

Witch trials – a perfect example of humanity as a whole going completely crazy. Reason was obscured, only fanaticism spoke, and only heretical beliefs remained, and for many people who profited from it, the vision of easy bloody mammon. A show that fed itself and everyone got something – a perfect perpetual motion machine – just like the pharmaceutical business today.

And the arguments of famous scientists and scholars of that time? – „She had the signum diabolicum, the needle test was conclusive, the witch always comes out…” – learned books spoke clearly – that was not discussed – it was a fact and a dogma – which was lectured about at universities! That was a completely relevant scientific opinion of that time.
And you can't argue against dogma - it was just a misguided and dangerous belief that plunged Europe into the Dark Ages...
One worldview – one erroneous belief!

And the one who defended the witch? Who only had healthy doubts and tried to come up with reason and logic? At best, he was labeled "only" a heretic, at worst also a witch and burned with her. And the property, of course, went to the inquisitor...

As I was looking at it, the period of witch trials lasted over 300 years... - so unfortunately we have something to look forward to with our children and grandchildren...

The only thing that actually makes me happy is that when all this is over and our descendants look at today's "scientific dogmas" with hindsight, the opinions of these now-famous scientists and "experts" will be as ridiculous as we laugh at the crazy medicine of Victorian England today. Doctors made ointments from mercury, gave the sick laxatives and emetics or crocodile dung. As late as the 20th century, respected professors routinely treated patients with arsenic and heroin, and smoking was the best cure for asthma. And less than forty years ago, doctors routinely performed thousands of crazy, barbaric lobotomies.

Let's all just hope that this time the truth comes out faster, because there's already so much of this lie around that more and more people are seeing through it.