Paracelsus

In 1520 the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) (Byers, 1998) published Diseases which lead to a Loss of Reason. In this he stated "the truly insane are those who have been suffering from it since birth and have brought it from the womb as a family heritage", thus inferring that some forms of madness are genetic in distribution. Poisons, witchcraft, astral influences, sinful imagination and disorders of the humours could all cause madness. He stated that there were five kinds of disease that could induce madness (Midelfort, 2000): epilepsy, mania, St. Vitus dance, suffocation of the intellect (caused by worms, uterine disorders and improper foods, for example) and loss of the senses. The last of these he further subdivided into five sub-categories: lunatics who through their own devices had fallen under the influence of the moon (lunacy); those who were insane from birth, due to careless and passionate sexual intercourse by the parents; witchcraft; and melancholy. Paracelsus also made it quite clear that spirits did not cause mental illness (Green, 2009). Therapies that he recommended included bleeding (which he considered to be the main thrust of treatment for mania), essences of gold, silver, iron, mercury, lead, pearls, coral, antimony, sapphire and sulphur (all alchemical remedies), opium, mandrake, astrological shielding to prevent lunacy, and the use of charms to treat those afflicted by witchcraft (Jacoby, 1918; Midelfort, 2000). Modern knowledge recognises that the use of some of the toxic agents that Paracelsus prescribed can help to rid the body of some psychopathological vectors (Panksepp, 2004), such as the causative organism of syphilis, Treponema pallidum (Kamen, 2000). The tertiary stage of syphilis is definitely connected with mental health problems (Semple, Smyth, Burns, Darjee & McIntosh, 2005). Paracelsus was also critical of the Inquisition and its treatment of the insane (Millon, 2004): “There are more superstitions in the Roman Church than in all these poor women and presumed witches.”  The concept of inducing seizures to treat psychiatric illnesses it not a new one. Paracelsus used camphor for this purpose (Abrams, 2002; Rudorfer, Henry & Sackheim, 2003).  In 1785 the London Medical Journal reported the use of the same substance to induce seizures in the treatment of mania (Abrams, 2002; Rudorfer, Henry & Sackheim, 2003).

Portrait of Paracelsus, attributed to the school of Quentin Matsys

References:

Abrams, R. (2002). Electroconvulsive therapy. (Fourth edition). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Byers, P.K. (Ed.) (1998). Encyclopedia of world biography. (Second edition). Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Green, B. (2009). Problem-based psychiatry. (Second edition). Abingdon, England: Radcliffe Publishing.

Jacoby, G.W. (1918). The unsound mind and the law: a presentation of forensic psychiatry. New York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls.

Kamen, H. (2000). Who’s who in Europe 1450-1750. London, England: Routledge.

Midelfort, H.C. (2000). A history of madness in sixteenth century Germany. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Millon, T. (2004). Masters of the mind: exploring the story of mental illness from ancient times to the new millennium. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Panksepp, J. (Ed.) (2004). Textbook of biological psychiatry. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Liss Inc.

Rudorfer, M.V., Henry, M.E., & Sackeim, H.A. (2003). Electroconvulsive therapy. In Tasman, A., Kay, J., & Lieberman, J.A. (Eds.) Psychiatry, (Second Edition). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Semple, D., Smyth, R., Burns, J., Darjee, R., & McIntosh, A. (Eds.) (2005). Oxford handbook of psychiatry (First Edition). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.