Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought

(Fifth Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE)

Chiara Thumiger

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009241335
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Philosophy

Phrenitis is ubiquitous in ancient medicine and philosophy. Galen mentions the disease innumerable times, patristic authors take it as a favourite allegory of human flaws, and no ancient doctor fails to diagnose it and attempt its cure. Yet the nature of this once famous disease has not been understood properly by scholars. This book provides the first full history of phrenitis. In doing so, it surveys ancient ideas about the interactions between body and soul, both in health and in disease. It also addresses ancient ideas about bodily health, mental soundness and moral 'goodness', and their heritage in contemporary psychiatric ideas. Readers will encounter an exciting narrative about health, illness and care as embedded in ancient 'life', but will also be forced to reflect critically on our contemporary ideas of what it means to be 'insane'. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Preface and Methodological Issues
• Chapter 2 Phrenitis in Classical (Fifth–Fourth Centuries BCE) and Hellenistic (Third–First Centuries BCE) Medicine
• Chapter 3 Psychology and Delocalizing Themes: Asclepiades, Celsus and Caelius Aurelianus
• Chapter 4 Theoretical Aspects of Imperial Nosology: Localization, Semiotics, Chronology, Aetiology (First–Sixth Centuries CE)
• Chapter 5 Phrenitic People: Patients and Therapies in Imperial and Late-Antique Cultures (First–Sixth Centuries CE)
• Chapter 6 Quasi phreneticus: Phrenitis in Non-Medical Sources in Imperial and Late-Antique Cultures (First Century BCE–Seventh Century CE)
• Chapter 7 The Byzantine and Medieval Periods: Medical Receptions of phrenitis in Greek, Latin and Semitic Languages (Sixth–Fourteenth Centuries CF)
• Chapter 8 The Construction of the Phrenitic in Larger Society: From the Medieval to the Early-Modern Period
• Chapter 9 Phrenitis in the Modern and Early-Modern Worlds: Anatomy, Pathology and the Survival of Graeco-Roman Medicine (Sixteenth–Nineteenth Centuries CE)
• Chapter 10 The Modern Age: The ‘Death’ of phrenitis
• Appendix 1 The ‘Sun Disease’
• Appendix 2 Naming, Nomenclatures, Dictionaries
• Appendix 3 Phrenitis from the Fifth Century BCE to the Twentieth Century CE: A Synoptic Table
• Bibliography
• Index Locorum
• General Index