Tag: insanity
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Temporary insanity in tropical waters
Richard de Grijs Sydney, Australia Frontispiece to the second edition (1639) of John Woodall’s The Surgion’s Mate, promising to outline “[t]he cures of the Scurvey [sic] … and of the Calenture.” Line engraving by George Glover. Wellcome Collection. So, by a calenture misled, The mariner with rapture sees, On the smooth ocean’s azure bed,…
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Queen Juana: The mad or the betrayed?
Juliana Menegakis London, United Kingdom Juana I de Castilla, ca. 1500 Master of Affligem. Museo Nacional de Escultura. Via Wikimedia. Juana of Castile is known by her epithet “the Mad.” But was she truly insane? Infanta Juana of Castile and Aragon was born in 1479 to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of…
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The bedside manners of Ingmar Bergman’s celluloid physicians
Eelco WijdicksRochester, Minnesota, United States The great humanitarian filmmaker and auteur Ingmar Bergman used physicians in his films much more frequently than his peers. Bergman’s full filmography, including two films (Thirst and Brink of Life) directed by but not written by Bergman, features sixteen physicians in thirteen films. Excluding the family doctor in Fanny and…
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Géricault’s art of insanity
Caitlin Meyer Scotland “Now I am disoriented and confused. I try in vain to find support; nothing seems solid, everything escapes me, deceives me. Our earthly hopes and desires are only vain fancies, our successes mere mirages that we try to grasp,” scrawled Théodore Géricault in a letter to his friend Dedreux-Dorcy in 1810.1…