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  • Title: Wild melancholy. On the historical plausibility of a black bile theory of blood madness, or hæmatomania.
    Author: Verplaetse J.
    Journal: Hist Psychiatry; 2020 Jun; 31(2):131-146. PubMed ID: 31969026.
    Abstract:
    Nineteenth-century art historian John Addington Symonds coined the term hæmatomania (blood madness) for the extremely bloodthirsty behaviour of a number of disturbed rulers like Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya (850-902) and Ezzelino da Romano (1194-1259). According to Symonds, this mental pathology was linked to melancholy and caused by an excess of black bile. I explore the historical credibility of this theory of 'wild melancholy', a type of melancholia that crucially deviates from the lethargic main type. I conclude that in its pure form Symonds' black bile theory of hæmatomania was never a broadly supported perspective, but can be traced back to the nosology of the ninth-century physician Ishaq ibn Imran, who practised at the Aghlabid court, to which the sadistic Ibrahim II belonged.
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