32 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



freshed and was well and the evil spirit departed from him." The 

 legendary history of Greece affords numerous instances of madness, but 

 as to the treatment in these early times there is only eloquent silence. 

 The belief in demoniacal possession was prevalent among all primitive 

 peoples, furnishing a clue for such treatment as was anywhere at- 

 tempted, and this belief, giving way a few centuries later to a partial 

 realization of the physical basis of insanity in the best medical minds, 

 recurs again in the darkness and decadence of the middle ages but 

 magnified and rendered terrible by the ignorance and gross super- 

 stitions of the time. In ancient Egypt, demons were exorcized and 

 lunatics purified in temples dedicated to Saturn. The god Khons is 

 said to have answered prayers for the cure of an Asiatic princess. The 

 priests of Egypt, who were also physicians of the day, were not un- 

 mindful of the benefit of hygienic measures and combined with them 

 the charm of music and the influence of the beautiful in nature and 

 in art. 



No reference is made in the literature of antiquity to places 

 set apart for the care of the insane. In Greece they were sometimes 

 cared for by the priests in the temple of Aesculapius. More often they 

 were detained at home by their friends if dangerous, or allowed, if 

 mild, the freedom of the country unrestrained and unmolested. Many 

 of the soothsayers, sorcerers and sibyls of these days were undoubtedly 

 insane, and the mental condition of some was known to those who 

 sought their offices. Restraining devices were generally used in all 

 violent forms of madness. Herodotus relates that Cleomenes (519-491 

 B. C), king of Lacedaemon, becoming insane, was imprisoned by his 

 kindred and his feet put in the stocks. While so bound he asked the 

 man left to watch him for a knife. This being refused he began to 

 threaten the man, who, becoming frightened, gave him the knife and 

 . he at once made repeated gashes in his limbs and abdomen until he 

 died. 



In the time of Euripides (480-406 B. C.) it would appear from 

 his account of the madness of Hercules that madmen were bound with 

 cords and fastened to the nearest convenient spot. Hippocrates, the 

 Father of Medicine (460-377 B. C), described three forms of mental 

 disease and seems to have recognized alcoholic insanity. He was the 

 first to lay stress upon the physical basis of insanity and ridicules the 

 treatment given by the priests. He used phlebotomy, purgatives, 

 emetics, baths, a vegetable diet, exercise, music and travel. He regu- 

 lated the use of hellebore, a drug held in high esteem from the dawn 

 of history. Writing to Democrates he said : "Hellebore when given to 

 the sane, pours darkness over the mind, but to the insane it is very 

 profitable." This drug was believed to act powerfully in cleansing and 

 invigorating the intellectual faculties. It is said that Carniades, the 



