Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought

(Fifth Century BCE to Twentieth Century CE)

Chiara Thumiger (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

448 Seiten

2023
Cambridge University Press (Verlag)
978-1-009-24132-8 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

From an archaic, unfamiliar and Greek-sounding disease described by the Hippocratics, 'phrenitis', to meningitis, stress syndrome and delirium: this book takes the reader on a journey through key phases of Western ideas about human physiology and mental health and reflects on loss and survival in the history of disease.

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.

CHIARA THUMIGER is a researcher in the Cluster of Excellence Roots at the Christian-Albrechts Universität zu, Kiel. She focuses on ancient Greek and Roman thought and literature, the history of ancient medicine and the history of psychiatry, as well as on comparative approaches to the anthropology of medicine and body history. She is the author of A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought (Cambridge, 2017).

1. Preface and methodological issues; 2. Phrenitis in Classical (5th–4th century BCE) and Hellenistic (3rd–1st century BCE) medicine; 3. Psychology and delocalising themes. Asclepiades, Celsus and Caelius Aurelianus; 4. Theoretical aspects of Imperial nosology: localization, semiotics, chronology, etiology (1st–6th century CE); 5. Phrenitic people: patients and therapies in Imperial-age and Late-antique cultures (1st–6th century CE); 6. Quasi phreneticus: phrenitis in non-medical sources in Imperial-age and Late-antique cultures (1st century BCE–7th century CE); 7. The Byzantine and medieval periods: medical receptions of phrenitis in Greek, Latin and Semitic languages (6th–14th century CE); 8. The construction of the phrenitic in larger society: from the medieval to the Early-modern period; 9. Phrenitis in the modern and Early-modern worlds: anatomy, pathology and the survival of Graeco-Roman medicine (16th–19th century CE); 10. The modern age: the 'death' of phrenitis.

Erscheinungsdatum	21.11.2023
Zusatzinfo	Worked examples or Exercises
Verlagsort	Cambridge
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	850 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie Altertum / Antike
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
ISBN-10	1-009-24132-X / 100924132X
ISBN-13	978-1-009-24132-8 / 9781009241328
Zustand	Neuware