The root phren- (φρεν-) in the Greek world

Nosological discussions of phrenitis in ancient medicine were very sensitive to the problems posed by the etymology from phrēn-phrenes, further qualified by cognates and compounds. The discussion of phrenes in De morbo sacro is perhaps the earliest we have, followed by Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s Parts of Animals, Anonymus Londinensis and Galen (at least twice).Footnote ² This discussion was felt to be relevant throughout the medieval and early-modern receptions of the disease, in which it was often reported on at length.Footnote ³

Throughout the Greek-speaking and Greek-reading worlds of antiquity, the root φρεν- is synonymous with ‘mind’ in the general sense. Cognates of phrēn/phrenes refer to the sphere of thinking, judging, being of sound mind, wisdom, mental pathology and mental and emotional states. The group includes a number of very common words.

A selection: φρονέω: ‘to think, to be minded’; φρόνημα, -ατος, τό: ‘mind, spirit, thought’; φρόνησις, -εως, ἡ: ‘purpose, intention’; φρονητικός, -ή, -όν: ‘concerned with thought’; φρόνιμος, -ον: ‘in one’s right mind’; φροντίζω: ‘to consider, reflect’; σωφρονέω: ‘to be of sound mind’; σωφρόνημα, -ατος, τό: ‘self-control’; σωφρονίζω: ‘to recall a person to his senses’; σωφροσύνη: ‘soundness of mind, prudence’; σώφρων: ‘of sound mind, prudent’; παραφροσύνη: ‘derangement’; ἀφρονέω: ‘to be silly, act foolishly’; καταφρονέω: ‘look down upon, despise’; δυσφρόνη, ἡ / δυσφροσύνη, ἡ: in pl. ‘anxieties, troubles’; δύσφρων, -ον: ‘sad at heart, sorrowful’. Compounds largely convey damage, disturbance or pathology, for instance: φρενοβλαβέω, φρενοβλαβής, φρενοβλαβεία: ‘to cause damage to the mind’, ‘damaged in mind’, ‘mind-damage’; φρενογηθής: ‘heart-gladdening’, in the magical papyri; φρενοδαλής: ‘ruining the mind’; φρενοδινής: ‘charming the heart’ (Nonn. 1.406); φρενοθελγής: ‘charming the mind’; φρένοθεν: ‘of oneʼs own mind’; φρενόληπτος: ‘possessed, mad’; φρενολυπέομαι: ‘to suffer in the mind’; φρενομανής: ‘distracted, maddened’; φρενομόρως: ‘struck in the mind by calamity’; φρενοπληγής: ‘striking the mind’; φρενοπλήξ: ‘struck in the mind’; φρενόπονος, ‘pain in the soul’; φρενοτέκτων: ‘building with the mind, ingenious’; φρεναπατάω: ‘to deceive someone’s mind’.

The Term phrenitis in the Vocabulary of Ancient Graeco-Roman Medical Texts and Their Tradition

The nomenclature of phrenitis in Greek and Latin sources is fairly limited and consistent:

Greek

• φρενῖτις/φρενίτις = phrenitis

• φρενιτικός, -ή, -όν = phrenitic

• φρενιτιάω = to be phrenitic

• φρενιτίζω = to be phrenitic

• φρενιτισμός, ὁ = phrenitis, phrenitic attack

• ΦΡΗΝΗΣΙΣ (Celsus, hapax) = phrenitis

Classical Latin

• ph/frenesis = phrenitis

• ph/frenitis = phrenitis

• ph/freneticus-ph/freniticus = phrenitic

Medieval, Modern Latin

• ch/karabitus = phrenitis

• ph/frenesis = phrenitis

• ph/frenitis= phrenitis

• ph/freneticus = phrenitic

• ph/freniticus = phrenitic

• ph/frenesia = phrenitis

• phrenetiasis = phrenitis

• phrenismus = phrenitis

Arabic

• farāniṭis = phrenitis

• qarānīṭis = phrenitis

• sirsām/sarsām/sirsen = phrenitis

• birsām/barsām/birsen = phrenitis

• ikhtilāṭ = confusion, delirium, phrenitis

Medieval and Modern European Languages: Medical and Lay Uses

The etymological group is used both medically and, hyperbolically, to indicate heightened states, fantasy or general madness of the intense, aggressive, frenetic kind, as well as folly and ethical flaw.

• Middle English frenesye

• Old French frenaisie

• Italian frenesia, frenetico, frenitico; frenico, farneticare

• Spanish frenesí, frenético

• French ph/frenesie, ph/freneticque, ph/freniticque

• German ph/frenetisch, ph/frenitisch

• English ph/frenzy, ph/frensy, ph/frenesy, ph/frenetic, ph/frenitc, ph/franticke,

  • ph/frantick, ph/frantickness, ph/frantic, ph/franticness

  • ph/frenalgia, ‘pain in the diaphragm’

  • ph/frenologia, ‘the science of localization of mental traits in the brain-skull’

A Glimpse at Medical Dictionaries

It is instructive to observe what can be seen as an almost exact point of expiration of phrenitis in the nomenclature by considering the genre of ‘medical reference books’: lexica, dictionaries, lists and classifications intended for the medical profession or for medical students.

Medical texts of this kind are a useful source due to the specific quality of the evidence they offer, which has to do not exclusively and not even primarily with the concept and its description, but with its position within a system of reference. A reasonable starting point for the medical vulgate of the seventeenth century might be the 1679 German Lexicon Medicum by Stephanus Blancardus (Steph. Blancardi Lexicon medicum renovatum), where under PHRENITIS we find: ‘Phrenitiasis, seu Phrenesis, est delirium cum febre continue, saepe cum furore et excandescentia (non autem a cerebri inflammatione, quae anticuis placuit) producta. … a φρήν mens, quia mens laborat. German: Große raserei in hitzigen Fieber’. Here phren- is ‘the mind’, and the disease is emphasized as mental, localized in the inflamed brain.

In examples restricted to the Anglo-Saxon world, the 1807 Edinburgh Medical and Physical Dictionary offers a reflection of the important disease taxonomies produced in the eighteenth century, Cullen’s most of all: PHRENITIS (φρενιτις, from φρήν, the mind) is ‘phrenzy or inflammation of the brain; a genus of disease in the class pyrexiae, and other phlegmasiae of Cullen’. The 1826 London Medical and Surgical Dictionary goes more explicitly in the same ‘cephalic’ direction and lists Phrenitis. Phrenesis. Phrenetiasis. Phrenismus. Cephalitis. Sphacelismus. Chephalalgia inflammatoria. By the Arabians Karabitus: ‘phrenzy, or inflammation of the brain’. The 1834 Cyclopaedia of Practical Medicine (London) also offers the lemma PHRENITIS. ‘Brain, inflammation of the’.

By the first decades of the nineteenth century, the inadequacy of the term begins to be felt. Robert Hooper’s Medical Dictionary (London, 1839) intriguingly notes: ‘PHRENITIS. (is, idis, f. φρενιτις, from φρήν, the mind). Phrensy. Inflammation of the brain. A very faulty term [my emphasis]. See Encephalitis.’ Harris’s Dictionary of Medical Terminology (1855) also has ‘PHRENITIS. From φρήν, mind, and itis, inflammation. Inflammation of the brain’, subtly accepting an equation between the two terms. Mayne’s Expository Lexicon (Reference Mayne1860) offers an entry for phrenes, as well as listing phrenesis, phrenetiasis and phrenitis. At Phrenes, we read:

PHRENITIS, idis, f. is defined:

The diaphragmatic interpretation and the ancient mental view of the phrenes are retained, while the ‘actual’ disease is interpreted as entirely encephalic. Reference FowlerFowler’s 1875 Medical Vocabulary (London) treats ‘phrenetic’ and other cognate terms as all indicating something ‘that affect the mental faculties’. In particular, ‘phrenetic’ means ‘applied adj. and subs. to a person subject to strong, or violent, sallies of imagination or excitement, which in some measure pervert the judgement and cause the person to act as if partially mad’. Phrenitis is ‘inflammation of the brain, or of its membranes’.

Significantly, the 1888 New Sydenham Society’s Lexicon of Medicine and the Allied Sciences (Reference Power and SedgwickPower and Sedqwick 1881–92) now has only the English ‘frenzy’. The entry reads: ‘FRENZY: (Mid. E. Frenesye; Old F. Frenaisie; L. Phrenensis; Gr. φρένησις for φρενῖτις, inflammation of the brain. F. Frenesie; I. Frenezia; S. Frenesi; G. Wahnsinn, Raserei). Madness, delirium, great agitation of the mind’. Mayne’s Medical Vocabulary (London, 1889) offers the brief: ‘PHRENITIS. (φρήν, the mind …) Pathol. Inflammation of the brain; phrenzy’. Reference QuainQuain’s 1890 A Dictionary of Medicine also treats the term as anachronistic: ‘PHRENITIS. (φρήν, the mind) – An obsolete term, [my emphasis] formerly associated with all forms of acute inflammations of the brain or its meninges, but especially the latter’. The 1892 Dictionary of Terms Used in Medicine by Richard Dennis Hoblyn (London) begins:

The 1899 edition of Mayne’s Medical Vocabulary (London) also inserts a notice of the anachronistic character of the term:

The dictionary quotes a variety of subtypes, bringing to full light the development of the disease into a syndrome or set of clusters of signs related to derangement, odd behaviour and ‘nervousness’ with disparate causes: ‘Phrenitis Calentura (A term for Sunstroke), Phrenitis latrans (Hydrophobia). Phrenitis Potatorum (Delirium tremens). Phrenitis verminosa (A form of phrenitis formerly supposed to be due to the presence of a “worm” in the brain)’. The spelling Phrensy is also used here: ‘Phrensy: (Phrenesis) The same as Frenzy; also used in the same sense as phrenitis’.

At the turn of the twentieth century, in The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary (Reference CattelCattel 1910), Phrenitis is simply ‘delirium of frenzy’, with what had once been a disease now completely transformed into the syndrome or the symptom. In the 1925 and 1932 editions, as phrenitis progresses towards ‘archaeological’ status, the reference to the Greek diaphragmatic origin returns with ‘1. Delirium or phrenzy 2. Inflammation of the diaphragm’. The 1910 Lippincott’s New Medical Dictionary (Philadelphia and London) also refers to both the Greek medical construct and the modern, medical frenzy and inflammation of the brain. It is thus evident that by the middle of the twentieth century the label phrenitis and its etymological implications were still recognized and included. In Skinner’s The Origin of Medical Terms (Reference Skinner1949), only the adjective phrenic is included, with cultural-historical discussion:

In the 1951 Medical Dictionary by Newman Dorland (Philadelphia and London), phrenitis is defined as ‘1. Inflammation of the brain 2. Delirium or frenzy 3. Inflammation of the diaphragm’. In Wain’s 1958 American historical dictionary The Story behind the Word, only ‘Frenzy’ is found, and there is no mention of phrenitis: ‘Τhis term designating a violent mania is a corruption of the older spelling of this word which was “phrensy”. This is derived from the Latin and the Greek word “phrenesis” meaning madness or delirium, and in turn comes from the Greek word “phren” or mind.’ Wakeley’s Faber Medical Dictionary (1962) lists:

Black’s Medical Dictionary, from 1981, represents yet another development, including ‘phrenic nerve’ (for the one ‘which chiefly supplies the diaphragm’) and ‘phrenology’ as an ‘old term’ for physiognomic approaches to the relationship between head-shape and character, but not ‘phrenitis’.

It is significant that phrenology – by then, much more factually absurd – is included, but not phrenitis, a testament to the still recent validity of the latter. The 1981 Psychiatric Dictionary by Robert J. Campbell mentions various terms in phren-, and under phrenitis explains that ‘This term was used by Hippocrates for inflammation of the brain’, which was precisely not the case, as we have seen. The 1986 Oxford Companion to Medicine likewise avoids phrenitis, but again accepts ‘phrenology’, defining this as a ‘pseudoscience’; the reality of phrenitis seems confirmed as both still too close to be dismissed as archaeology and too distant scientifically to be treated as medically valid. The Radcliffe European Medical Dictionary (1991) includes only the adjective ‘frenico (Italian, ‘diaframmatico, mentale’) = phrenic (English) = diaphragmatisch, Zwerchfell- (German), frénico (Spanish), psychique (French)’. Stedman’s Medical Dictionary (1995) also offers ‘phrenic’: ‘1. Diaphragmatic 2. Of the mind’ and ‘phrenology’ as ‘obsolete doctrine’, but not phrenitis, while the 2006 Mosby’s Dictionary has the adjective ‘phrenetic’ for ‘frenzied, delirious, maniac’, and phren- again referring to ‘1. Diaphragm 2. The mind’. But we find no phrenitis here. Discomfort with the label and its bulky history is also visible, finally, in the 1999 A Dictionary of the History of Medicine, which keeps phrenitis somewhat distant, describing it as ‘Ancient Greek term for disease of the mind’, while offering a longer section on ‘phrenology’.

This partial, episodic and patently patchy survey shows that sometime towards the middle of the nineteenth century the term phrenitis became (or began to become) obsolete and non-viable in official medicine. But the adjectives associated with it and its general ‘mental’ and ‘diaphragmatic’ meanings were remembered, as were its connections with the brain, more or less precisely traced back to various authors of the ancient past. The concreteness and clinical appeal of the term were still felt well into the nineteenth century, when several dictionaries consider it passé but its copyright had not yet expired, so to speak: while phrenology can be comfortably placed in the Museum of the History of Medicine, phrenitis cannot yet be handled so cavalierly. As far as phren- is concerned, the root’s meanings ‘mind’, ‘diaphragm’ and ‘brain’ are still felt, and more or less in this order of importance. Today, however, the vast majority of doctors and general readers ignore what phrenitis once was.