Abstract
The term 'phrenitis', as employed in ancient Greece, refers to acute inflammation of mind and body, not in a theoretical but in a descriptive sense. Its presumed seat was never anatomically or conceptually well determined. Although the term is no longer used in the clinical sciences it provides modern psychiatry and medicine with an important and forgotten perspective: (1) as an inflammation of the 'mind', phrenitis can be said to represent a fundamental psychopathological state; (2) as an affection reflecting a disturbance of both mind and body it may serve as a starting point for the development of a model of disease where both psychic and somatic manifestations occur.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.