Herodotus on conversion disorder

To the Editor

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian. His only known (extensive) work, The Histories, was completed c.420 BCE and focuses on the Graeco-Prussian Wars. While he has critics, Herodotus was called “The Father of History” by Cicero, and has strong supporters (Burn, 1972). A recent translation (Holland, 2013, p 433) provides lines concerning the battle at Marathon, which may be of interest to scholars of conversion disorder:

An extraordinary thing happened at Marathon to one Athenian, a man called Epizelus, the son of Couphagoras, who had been fighting with great bravery in the very thick of the hand-to-hand combat when suddenly he lost the sight of his eyes. He had taken no wound, nor a blow to anywhere on his body; and yet from that moment on, to the very end of his days, he continued to be blind. I have heard a story that he used to tell to account for his affliction: that he had imagined himself confronted by a giant man in full armour, whose beard was so bushy that it shadowed his entire shield. This phantom brushed by Epizelus and killed the man standing next to him.

Is this an account of conversion disorder? Sudden sensory loss in the absence of physical injury in a battle setting satisfies diagnostic criteria. The uncharacteristic features are the reports of the “phantom” and that the symptom remained throughout life (symptoms usually fluctuate or resolve). Herodotus was primarily concerned with the events of the battle. His account of the sudden onset of blindness is doubtless more reliable than what may, or may not, have been said by or happened to the “patient” decades later. This society was different from ours, and cultural factors will have influenced the presentation and progress of symptoms. The battle was fought in 490 BCE; thus, this would appear to be a very early account of conversion disorder.