Searching for schizophrenia in ancient Greek and Roman literature: A systematic review

Objective: The aim of this study was to systematically examine ancient Roman and Greek texts to identify descriptions of schizophrenia and related disorders. Method: Material from Greek and Roman literature dating from the 5th Century BC to the beginning of the 2nd Century AD was systematically reviewed for symptoms of mental illness. DSM IV criteria were applied in order to identify material related to schizophrenia and related disorders. Results: The general public had an awareness of psychotic disorders, because the symptoms were described in works of fiction and in historical accounts of malingering. There were isolated instances of text related to psychotic symptoms in the residents of ancient Rome and Greece, but no written material describing a condition that would meet modern diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia. Conclusion: In contrast to many other psychiatric disorders that are represented in ancient Greek and Roman literature, there were no descriptions of individuals with schizophrenia in the material assessed in this review.

An 18th century understanding of migraine - Samuel Tissot (1728-1797)

During the period 1778-1780 the Swiss physician Samuel A A D Tissot (1728-1797) published his Traite des nerfs et de leur maladies, a work which continued to be available and widely influential until at least the middle of the following century. It contained a long chapter dealing with migraine, based on the earlier literature on the topic and on Tissot's own clinical experience. The work appeared at the beginning of the modern era of interest in migraine, and provided the first reasonably adequate and systematic account of the disorder to become widely available. Its descriptions of migraine phenomena have an enduring validity, though Tissot's ideas on the pathogenesis of the disorder, viz. that it usually arose from stomach disturbance, were not founded on satisfactory evidence and are long since superseded. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.