Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/42

34 should be employed and, later on, liquid nourishment should be administered and the friction repeated. By these means it was his hope to induce sleep. Themison, his disciple, prescribed a more liberal diet, baths and astringent fomentations. Another of his disciples recommended stripes in the treatment of the insane, but it is doubtful if this was sanctioned by the master. Asclepiades also attempted substitutive medication, advising intoxication in the general treatment of insanity.

Celsus (A. D. 5) formulated wise rules for the hygienic and moral treatment, but unfortunately advised also the use of hunger, chains and chastisements to subjugate the patient. He would have those scolded whose mirth was excessive and resort to torment should conciliation fail. To startle a patient suddenly, to terrify him, this was excellent. But he directed that all things possible should be done to divert the melancholy and to excite cheerful hopes. Pleasure should be sought in fables and in sports, in music and in reading aloud. To quiet the excited and to favor sleep, he made use of a rocking motion and the sound of a waterfall.

Aretaeus (A. D. 80) gave a detailed description of mania and melancholia, considering the latter to be the incipient stage of the former. Little is known as to his methods of treatment, except that he does not mention restraint in his descriptions.

Galen (A. D. 150), the celebrated advocate of the humoral pathology, gives little as to treatment, but his theory of insanity is interesting. Moisture, he says, produces fatuity, dryness sagacity, and therefore the sagacity of a man will be diminished in proportion to the excess of moisture over dryness. Therefore preserve a happy medium between these opposite qualities, use venesection if you think the whole body of the patient contains melancholy blood. Bleeding must be avoided if madness arise from idiopathic disease of the brain.

Then follows Coelius Aurelianus (A. D. 195), leaving a most remarkable treatise on the treatment of insanity, preaching gentleness and humanity, skilled attendance and non-restraint. He thus expresses himself regarding the physicians who resort to harsh methods of treatment: "They seem rather to lose their own reason than to be disposed to cure their patients, when they liken them to wild beasts who must be tamed by the deprivation of food and the torments of thirst. They go so far as to counsel bodily violence and blows, as if to compel the return of reason by such provocations, a deplorable method of treatment that can only aggravate the patients' condition, injure them physically, and offer to them the miserable remembrance of their sufferings whenever they recover the use of their reason." He taught that the patient should be put in a quiet room, moderately warm and light, excluding everything of an exciting nature. The bed