PSYCHIATRY. 33 



Academic, when preparing to refute the dogmas of the Stoics, went 

 through a course of purgatives by hellebore. Melampus, son of 

 Amythaon, is said to have cured the daughters of Proetus, King of 

 Argos, of melancholy, by purging them with hellebore. According to 

 tradition Melampus had observed that the goats who fed on this plant 

 were purged, and having administered it to the king's daughters, who 

 were wandering in the woods under the delusion that they were cows, 

 he cured them and received the hand of one of them in marriage and 

 a part of the kingdom of Argos as his reward. So celebrated was this 

 medicinal agent as a mental remedy that the poets of antiquity sang 

 its praises. Horace, in allusion to the 'happy madman,' says : 



He, when his friends at much expense and pains, 

 Had amply purged T\-ith hellebore his brains. 

 Came to himself — "Ah, cruel friends!" he cried, 

 "Is this to save me? Better far had died 

 Than thus be robbed of pleasure so refined, 

 The dear delusion of a raptured mind." 



Persius thus addresses Xero in his fourth satire, telling him to 

 relinquish the arduous duties of government: 



"Thou hast not strength, such labors to sustain. 

 Drink hellebore, my boy — drink deep and purge thy brain." 



Hippocrates had his patients collect this medicine themselves at 

 Anticyra, in Thessaly, and thus made its use an incident of a very 

 hygienic course of treatment. In cases of suicidal melancholia he 

 employed mandragora, first spoken of by him in the treatment of this 

 disease. 



The attitude of the state toward the care of the insane at the period 

 soon after the death of Hippocrates is thus expressed by Plato (375 

 B. C.) in 'Laws of the Republic': "If any one is insane, let him not 

 be seen, openly in the city, but let the relatives of such a person watch 

 over him at home in the best manner they know and if they are negli- 

 gent let them pay a fine." 



The teachings of Hippocrates and his followers were probably the 

 guide for those who had to do with the insane during the next two cen- 

 turies, and nothing further appears in medical literature until the care- 

 ful study of insanity made by Asclepiades of Bythinia (100 B. C). He 

 distinguished between illusions and hallucinations, noted the changing 

 mental states of individual cases and made some innovations in the 

 treatment. He recommended his patients to be placed in the light 

 rather than confined in dark rooms or cells, disapproved of venesec- 

 tion, and of the fomentations of poppy, mandragora or hyoscyamus. 

 He prescribed abstinence from food, drink and sleep in the early part 

 of the day; the drinking of water in the evening; that gentle friction 



VOL. LX. 3. 



