This was the belief of many Puritans in Salem. The Puritans had such strong religious beliefs that it seemed highly plausible to them that the devil was using their peers as pawns to exert his evil influence on the world. Another thing that fueled the Puritans' belief in enchantment was a book written a few years earlier called Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions by Cotton Mather. This book explained the symptoms of four children who had been bewitched by their washerwoman. The symptoms Mather described were the same ones that seemed to plague the city. This only increased the belief that a witch epidemic had broken out in the city. Many doctors in the city began to blame witchcraft for illnesses that could not be diagnosed. In 1692, Williams and Elizabeth Parris began behaving uncharacteristically, running around, complaining of strange pains, and jumping under things. They visited their local doctor and he told them they must be bewitched because the activities were so inexplicable. Another medical case thought to be witchcraft was that of Martha Goodwin. He began screaming, complaining of unusual pain and demonstrating behavior that was different from normal. The symptoms displayed in Martha Goodwin were so out of the ordinary that doctors did not know what could be causing these problems. Doctors decided that the little girl must be a victim of witchcraft and arrested her parents on the assumption that they were