HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Seasonality, Panic Attack, Hemorrhoid
9 Jun 2018
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HIST 449- April 3
Melancholy in Ancient Medicine
Part 1: mental illness in ancient medicine, variations on the theme of
melancholy
• They did conceive of mental illness in antiquity but not really of
schizophrenia or madness, they did not try to naturalize this
• Dionysus is the god of wine
Galen
• Writes a lot about morality and recognizing flaws
• On Affected Parts is on ethics
• You self diagnose as having a character flaw and you self treat it
• Writes on his grief from losing his library in a fire
• Grief is not a mental illness
• For a stoic perspective: grief is one of the four mental states which is a form
of suffering and disease – grief, anger, desire and hope
• Today: Faith Wallis is going to focus on melancholy
• Melancholy had the biggest influence in western psychology and is
conceptualized as the fountainhead of creativity
Hippocrates
• In Epidemics Hippocrates writes on Nicanors affection for the flute girl
• Writes that he had a panic attack of sort
• We can presume that Nicanor told Hippocrates about this
• This treatise doesnt say what the doctor could do for him
• Melancholy is a part of the black bile
• Melancholy emerges as a disease that has a seasonal component
• In Aphorisms He says that it is good to have hemorrhoids when you have
renal disease or melancholy
• This seems to be something to do with evacuation- nature is trying to expel
some bloody matter from he body
• Patients with fear or depression of long standing are subject to melancholia
• Melancholia is connected to fear and depression- a state of mind
• Melancholics are the opposite of ballistics- gloomy and timid and negative
people
Aristotle
• Probably pseudo-aristotle
• Why is that super achievers are always melancholic?
• Suggests that lovesickness is caused by melancholy and is a mental illness
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