NATS 1730 Lecture Notes - Lecture 20: Charaka Samhita, Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum, Islamic Golden Age
8 Feb 2017
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Mentally insane: the person does not know what they did was wrong. 600 bc, india charaka samhita was the earliest book that uses this concept. In the dark ages, they believed mental illness meant you were possessed by demons. Avicenna: -significant thinker, around the end of the islamic golden age. Lunatic: defined as an observation that people and some animals act erratically during the full moon. Humans, like a lot of animals, are nocturnal hunters. During a full moon, we can see better this was a speculation during those times. One of the diseases were called melancholy -> chronic depression. They believed that melancholy was brought on by yourself laziness and the way you cure it is by making people work or putting them through hardship. Patients were chained to bed, did chores, were whipped. He started it all, but it was taken up by robert whytt, johann spurzheim, and william.
