ABSTRACT
The terms and concepts of melancholia, mania, and the manic depressive illness have ancient roots. The term melancholia has its origin in the culture of Ancient Greece and essentially means “black bile.” The term goes back before the time of Hippocrates’ medical observations to the theory that an excess of bile is responsible for various illnesses. Melancholia was due to an overabundance of black bile, whereas mania had its origin in too much yellow bile and a combination of black and yellow bile. The origins of the term mania are not as clear. The Roman physician Caelius Aurelianus proposes the several etymologies of the term. The favored view of its beginning is that mania is a combination of two Greek words, ania which means to produce great mental anguish, and manos which means relaxed or loose, hypothetically referring to an excessive loosening of the mind or soul. Another possibility arises from the fact that madness is a mythic figure called Mania who is a powerful god who can possess both human beings and other gods. When the god is in a frenetic and destructive rage, she is called Lyssa. In the playwright Euripides’ “The Madness of Heracles” she is called a daimon, essentially the same as a god, who can possess and influence the behavior of human creatures. In Euripides’ tragedies individuals are caused by the gods to commit heinous acts and are unaware of what they did after coming out of this state of being possessed.
