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1 results

  • Chapter 10 - The Modern Age

  • Chiara Thumiger, Cluster of Excellence Roots, Christian-Albrechts Universität zu Kiel, Germany
  • Book:
    <i>Phrenitis</i> and the Pathology of the Mind in Western Medical Thought
    Published online:
    16 November 2023
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023, pp 360-369
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  • Summary

    The final chapter is devoted to the ‘death of phrenitis’. The end of the active life of the disease can be described as taking place through three avenues, and producing three outcomes. First of all, in a somatic sense, phrenitis gives way to meningitis and meningo-encephalitis, the inflammation of the brain and its membranes; secondly, its symptomatology evolves into what in modern pathology is defined as a syndrome, that of ‘delirium’; thirdly, one last, ‘softer’ outcome of phrenitis is the lay concept of stress, classified as ‘stress syndrome’ in contemporary taxonomies. This specific story of one specific disease, in the final conclusions, is discussed as exemplary of the dynamics behind the ‘birth’, ‘life’ and ‘death’ of biological concepts more generally.