FROM THE ANNALS OF PSYCHIATRIC ABSURDITY

Rhazes the Arabian Doctor

      From A.D. 865 to 925, Rhazes was an Arabian doctor who was considered to be and outstanding scholar of the times.  He wrote over 200 different volumes on medicine, religion, philosophy, and astronomy.  As he rose to prominence, he became physician-in-chief to the Baghdad Hospital, which was a remarkable institution of its time, because it had a ward exclusively for the mentally ill.  Rhazes saw the body/mind connection with mental illness and even used a primitive form of psychotherapy.  However, the Arabian doctor ran afoul of the other influential doctors who believed that all illness was the result of demon activity.  Since Rhazes disagreed with the medical establishment he was sentenced “to be hit over the head with his own book, until the book or the head broke.”  This early psychiatrist was rendered blind after this punishment.  ( Taken from The History of Psychiatry by Franz. G. Alexander and Sheldon T. Sel;esnick)

Suicides Punished in Medieval Times

  The act of suicide was extremely repugnant to the medieval mind.  Those who killed themselves had extreme punishments carried out on their corpses to enact symbolic shame.  The book, Legal Lore, by William Andrews explains that, “The body was, by the customary law … to be drawn to the gibbet (instrument of hanging) as cruelly as possible … .  The very door-step of the house in which he lay was to be torn up, for the dead man was not worthy to pass over it.  Impalement, transfixture by a stake, though well enough known on the continent as a punishment for the living, became there (in France) and in England alike, the special doom of the suicide.

Psychotic Mass Movement in Medieval Times

     During the 13^th and 14^th centuries mass movements arose, driving many psychotic.  In Hungary, in the year 1231 a cult arose that believed that the plague was caused by personal sins.  The History of Psychiatry says that, “They marched through Europe singing hymns, bearing red crosses on their breasts, and carrying whips with knots from which hung iron tongs.”  They were known as “flagellants” and their converts whipped themselves in public.  Although their group was condemned by Pope Clement, another group of flagellants sprang up in Strasbourg in 1418.