stone of madness

A curious belief held by some in the Middle Ages was that madness was caused by a “stone of madness” situated anywhere in the body, but most commonly in the head (Babiloni, Babiloni, Carducci, Cincotti & Rossini, 2003; Sabbatini, 1997; Shorter, 1997; Thackery & Harris, 2003). This stone could be removed by surgery, and so it was that many quack healers roamed Europe performing sham operations on the mentally ill, removing the stone, and affecting a cure, which, presumably, was very short-lived. A painting of the procedure was completed between 1475 and 1480 by the Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (Palmer, 2008), (c. 1450-1516), and other artists of the period followed suit (Gross, 1999).

The Extraction of the Stone of Madness by Hieronymus Bosch

Cutting out the Stone of Madness, by Pieter Bruegel

Excising the Stone of Folly by Pieter Huys

References:

Babiloni, F., Babiloni, C., Carducci, F., Cincotti F., & Rossini, P.M. (2003). ‘The stone of madness’ and the search for the cortical sources of brain diseases with non-invasive EEG techniques. Clinical Neurophysiology 114: 1775–1780.

Gross, C.G. (1999). ‘Psychosurgery’ in Renaissance art. Trends in Neuroscience 22, 429-431.

Palmer, J. (2008). The stone of madness. Retrieved from http://scienceblogs.com/bioephemera/2008/08/the_stone_of_madness.php

Sabbatini, R.M.E (1997). The history of psychosurgery. Retrieved from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n02/historia/psicocirg_i.htm

Shorter, E. (1997). A history of psychiatry: from the era of the asylum to the age of Prozac. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Thackery, E., & Harris, M. (Eds.) (2003). The Gale encyclopedia of mental disorders. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Group, Inc.