Mental illness in ancient Rome
It can be difficult to apply modern labels such as schizophrenia accurately to conditions described in ancient medical writings and other literature, which may for instance be referring instead to mania.
Treatments included therapeutic philosophy, intellectual activities, emetics, leeching, bloodletting, venipuncture, sensory manipulation and control of environmental factors, exercise and physical therapy, and medicaments.
The Roman orator and sometime philosopher Cicero (1st century BC) distinguished between anxietas,[2] worry about future events, and angor, an outburst of emotion.
[3][4] Galen, a Greek physician and surgeon who immigrated to Rome in the 2nd century, observed patients with symptoms resembling generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder, such as sweating, indigestion, palpitations, dizziness, fever, weight loss, insomnia, changing skin color, low heartbeat, and an irregular heartbeat.
[7][8] The Stoics practiced the technique of negative visualization,[9] which involved considering the worst possible outcome of an action or event in order to prepare oneself for the consequences of it.
[16] This man is described as "turning pale under his crown of flowers," praying with a "faltering voice," and scattering "incense with trembling hands.
"[17][18] Mood disorders were frequently described in Greco-Roman medical literature of the Roman Imperial era, including a condition resulting in poor appetite, lethargy, sleeplessness, irritability, agitation, long-lasting fears, and hopelessness, and melancholia, which is now known as depression.
[27][28] Soranus, also from Ephesus (in present-day Turkey), noticed that the condition of melancholics improved after they drank from certain alkaline springs nearby,[29][30] which have been shown to contain lithium, a chemical element used to treat bipolar disorder.
The poet Horace mentions schoolboys encouraged to learn by means of cookies, which may have been actually shaped like or stamped with letters and used for teaching.
[48] Atticus Bradua, a consul in AD 185, struggled with reading as a child; among any other methods that may have been tried, his father arranged to have him attended by twenty-four slaves, each named with a different letter of the Latin alphabet.
[49] Creative teaching methods, in conjunction with the importance of oral expression in Roman society, meant that dyslexia wasn't necessarily a bar to achievement.
The emperor Augustus was described by Suetonius as having difficulty in learning to read or write and remembering his speeches despite his intelligence; dyslexia is one possible cause.
Arataeus writes about mentally ill people with hallucinations, disorganized speech, delusions, social withdrawal, poor performance at work, and catatonia.
They believed that instead, patients should kept in a moderately light room located on the ground floor, eat a simple diet, and have regular exercise.
Poppy, Hyoscyamus, saffron ointment, mandrake apples, cardamomum balsam, the sound of falling water, sycamine tears, and mulberry were all thought to aid in sleep.
Roman writers believed alcoholism would result in decreased sexual potency and damage to the social order, contributing to adultery and promiscuity in women.
Pliny believed that "a great part of mankind are of the opinion that there is nothing else in life worth living for" and that alcoholics were "driven to frenzy" and a "thousand crimes."
[59] Roman doctors used opium to treat illnesses such as insomnia, pain, coughs, hysteria, and conditions involving the digestive system.
This condition involved hearing and seeing things which were not real, irrationality, depression, loss of appetite, frightfulness, mood swings, eye movements, and hypervigilance, for which Celsus prescribed hypericum.
[40] A possible ancient example of anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder characterized by extremely limited consumption of food, involved a Roman saint named Blaesilla.
[97][98][99] Ancient writers, such as Homer, Hippocrates, and Aretaeus, noticed an individual with intense emotions, impulsive behavior, extreme anger, depression, and mania.
The Apologia of Apuleius is a speech in which he defends himself against charges that he quite literally bewitched his very wealthy older wife, Pudentilla, rendering her mentally incompetent for the purpose of defrauding her.
[106] Popular medications included not only beaver testicles, weasels, and smoked camel brains, but apotropaic practices such as tickling patients with their head near a fire.
[109] The terms used in legal texts for insanity have general meanings as well—the poet Ovid describes a mythological woman as not compos mentis when she loses the self-possession of her healthy mind in a highly charged sexual situation[110]—and the criteria used by medical consultants to distinguish mental incompetence under the law have not survived in the written record.
During the early Imperial period, a person who thought they might be dealing with a furiosus could ask a praetor or provincial governor to investigate, affirm the diagnosis, and appoint a curator.
[116] Because Roman society was patriarchal, a head of household (paterfamilias) who was furiosus put the family at particular risk of destabilization, calling for the urgent appointment of a curator.
[117] Augustus, the first and longest-reigning Roman emperor, even appointed a special procurator for Archelaus, client king of Cappadocia, during a time when he was struggling with physical and mental illness.
Extant documents for early discharge happen to cite only physical infirmities, though Roman jurists discuss cases of mental illness.
[122] Legal texts list six extenuating circumstances for suicide attempts that could result in a dishonorable discharge rather than execution: inpatientia doloris (unbearable pain), morbus (physical or mental illness), luctus (sorrow or grief), taedium vitae (weariness of life), furor (madness), and pudor (shame).
[123] Similar extenuating circumstances could be taken into account in a charge of treason arising from self-mutilation for the purpose of evading or escaping military service, for instance cutting off a thumb.
