HISTORY 70F Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Christina Of Bolsena, Medieval Madness, Tabula Rasa
Document Summary
Now, we"ll discuss how people conceptualize madness: changed in tandem with how people understood the body. Madness was not thought of as something inherently mental. Hippocrates was one of the first who believed madness needed to be treated as something separate. Pre-5th c. bc: madness as supernatural. Similar to babylonians who viewed illnesses as a punishment from the gods. Hippocrates: on the sacred disease o o. Focused on epilepsy (believed to be a form of madness) People attributed it to the gods (punishment if you transgressed) Hippocrates believed epilepsy was a result of imbalance among four humors: madness as bodily imbalance. They thought it was an excess of phlegm because people would foam at mouth. **naturalistic causes; can understand it with naturalistic terms o. Stated that illness isn"t a result of supernatural; but a naturalistic cause (imbalance among humors: madness in mythology. Ex: in literature, characters go mad after committing sin against gods.
