It is hard to believe that this had been considered conventional wisdom at one time. Now, just saying this aloud carries serious repercussions.
“It is hard to believe that this had been considered conventional wisdom at one time.”
It was also conventional wisdom that a woman who was bound and thrown into the pond would float if she were a witch and would sink and drown if she were innocent of being a witch. It was also conventional wisdom that witches were responsible for laying crops waste with unseasonably cold weather, and the number of witch trials and witch burnings reached a peak as the conventional wisdom caused the community to seek out more witches to burn.