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  • Chapter 2 - Phrenitis in Classical (Fifth–Fourth Centuries bce) and Hellenistic (Third–First Centuries bce) Medicine

  • Chiara Thumiger, Cluster of Excellence Roots, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Germany
  • Book:
    <i>Phrenitis</i> and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought
    Published online:
    16 November 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023, pp 21-57
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  • Summary

    Chapter 2 begins with classical medicine, exploring the sources of so-called Hippocratic medicine, nosological and clinical, as well as other lesser-known authors from the fourth century BCE such as Diocles and Praxagoras. The limited material preserved on our topic from Hellenistic medicine (Herophilus and Erasistratus) is also surveyed. The richest information is preserved by the writings of the Hippocratic Corpus, where phrenitis first appears, and where it is richly described, both in nosological profiles and with reference to specific patients. Its core traits are by this point established: fever, localization in the chest , and an association with winter also showed by the co-morbidity with, and analogy to, pleuritis and pneumonia. Interestingly, the phren/phrenes are seldom mentioned in discussions of phrenitis, and when they are, not in their traditional, ‘Homeric’ psychological function, or directly as locus affectus, thus signalling a desire to distance the pathological narrative from traditional poetic models.