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  • Chiara Thumiger, Cluster of Excellence Roots, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Germany
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
November 2023
Print publication year:
2023
Online ISBN:
9781009241311
Creative Commons:
Creative Common License - CC Creative Common License - BY Creative Common License - NC Creative Common License - ND
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/creativelicenses

Book description

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.

Reviews

‘A comprehensive account of the history of the concept of phrenitis has long been awaited. This monograph by Chiara Thumiger, a leading expert in the study of the history of mental health and illness, admirably fills this major gap.’

Philip van der Eijk - Humboldt University Berlin

‘Chiara Thumiger's monumental study of phrenitis is not only an astonishingly erudite and refreshingly sophisticated guide to the ancient, post-classical, and even modern evidence for this perplexing, obsolete, but central medical term for mental illness. It never forgets the human patients, in their distress and anxiety, and the human doctors who do their best to understand and help them.’

Glenn Most - Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, and University of Chicago

‘Chiara Thumiger’s extraordinary book examines the history of the disease phrenitis from the fifth century BCE to its progressive disappearance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries CE. Its longue-durée approach and its breadth bring to mind Owsei Temkin’s The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. The work draws upon a huge array of sources, both medical and non-medical, and deals sympathetically with the suffering of humans and non-human animals.’

Laurence Totelin - Cardiff University

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Contents

Full book PDF
  • Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought
    pp i-i
  • Reviews
    pp ii-ii
  • Copyright page
    pp iv-iv
  • Contents
    pp v-vi
  • Figures
    pp vii-vii
  • Acknowledgements
    pp viii-x
  • Chapter 1 - Preface and Methodological Issues
    pp 1-20
  • Chapter 3 - Psychology and Delocalizing Themes
    pp 58-93
  • Asclepiades, Celsus and Caelius Aurelianus
  • Chapter 10 - The Modern Age
    pp 360-369
  • The ‘Death’ of phrenitis
  • Appendices
    pp 370-389
  • Appendix 1 - The ‘Sun Disease’
    pp 370-376
  • Appendix 2 - Naming, Nomenclatures, Dictionaries
    pp 377-384
  • Appendix 3 - Phrenitis from the Fifth Century bce to the Twentieth Century ce: A Synoptic Table
    pp 385-389
  • Bibliography
    pp 390-431
  • Index Locorum
    pp 432-440
  • General Index
    pp 441-448

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