Priests tended to agree with this, although disputes remained about where to draw the boundary.īut Professor Scull said this uneasy co-existence gradually changed over centuries. But others, they claimed, belonged to them,' Professor Scull said.

'The doctors at that period confessed that some forms of madness genuinely belong in the province of the divines, in the province of the priests.

The Age of Enlightenment following the Dark Ages led to tension between the religious establishment and the emerging sciences. He said the Arab world persevered with early scientific understandings fostered by the Greeks and Romans, while western cultures stagnated. 'Obviously in Chaucer's Canterbury tales, is about pilgrims going to Canterbury to be cured of various kinds of illness - bodily illness but also mental distress,' Professor Scull said. Medieval times were littered with the idea that Christians, especially saints' and martyrs' remains and relics, could cure followers. That's one way in which Christianity for example becomes associated with this issue.' 'So that issue of maybe exorcising madness becomes something that from Christ passes to his disciples, and then to bishops and even ordinary priests. He is supposed to have cast as many as five devils out of Mary Magdalene,' Professor Scull said. 'Jesus on a number of occasions is portrayed as casting demons out and devils out of bodies. 'The relative balance of those things affect one's temperament, one's character, and if they are sufficiently out of balance will tip you over into melancholia or into mania.'ĭespite this slightly more scientific view, superstitious views about spirits and demons persisted, especially within the Christian texts. 'Illness as a whole is explained in terms of the four humours, so blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm,' Professor Scull said. The Ancient Greeks had a more natural approach to mental illness and associated it more closely with physical sickness. 'It is true even in Islamic societies and in Chinese society for example, those beliefs in possession and spirits and some kind of punishment are very widespread,' Professor Scull said. In the Bible's Old Testament, or the Jewish Torah, evil spirits and divine punishment were considered causes of mental disorders. Professor Scull, who wrote Madness in Civilisation, said the popular view in ancient cultures was that madness was caused by evil spirits.

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