Phrenitis and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought

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).

'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

• 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.