Long before Freud couched on a sofa or the DSM became a therapist’s bible, Hippocrates—the ancient Greek “Father of Medicine”—was already scribbling notes about mental health. Around 400 BCE, he proposed that psychiatric conditions weren’t punishments from gods but natural ailments rooted in the body, specifically an imbalance of the four “humors”: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. As part of this theory, he categorized mental disorders into nine types, proving that even in antiquity, humans were overthinkers about overthinking.
Hippocrates’ classifications included mania (episodic frenzy), melancholia (deep sadness), phrenitis (brain fever), and epilepsy (the “sacred disease,” which he insisted wasn’t so sacred). He also described paranoia, hysteria (blamed on a “wandering uterus,” because ancient sexism), and disorders tied to aging or injury. His clinical observations, recorded in texts like On the Sacred Disease, dismissed demonic possession in favor of diet, exercise, and herbal remedies. Imagine telling a patient, “Eat more lentils, less goat cheese, and your hallucinations should clear right up!”
While modern science has retired the humors theory, Hippocrates’ groundwork was revolutionary. He shifted mental health from temples to clinics, arguing that the brain, not the gods, governed behavior. His nine categories weren’t perfect—for example, he conflated delirium from infections with chronic mental illness—but they laid the foundation for future diagnoses. It’s like inventing the wheel, only for psychiatry.
The ancient Greeks, however, weren’t fully sold. Many still blamed mental illness on angry deities, leaving Hippocrates to play the role of a progressive buzzkill. “No, your anxiety isn’t Poseidon’s wrath—it’s too much black bile. Try yoga.” (Note: Ancient Greek yoga likely involved olives and debating Plato.)
Hippocrates’ legacy is a mix of brilliance and oddities. He prescribed opium for depression, bloodletting for mania, and marital harmony for hysteria. Yet his emphasis on observation and natural causes echoes in modern psychology. Terms like “melancholia” evolved into “depression,” while “hysteria”… well, we don’t talk about hysteria anymore.
Critics might argue that nine types oversimplify the mind’s complexity, but in 400 BCE, even recognizing mental illness as a medical issue was radical. Hippocrates’ work reminds us that humanity’s quest to understand the brain is ancient, messy, and occasionally hilarious. After all, how many physicians today would diagnose existential dread as “an excess of phlegm”?
So, the next time you scroll through a mental health app, spare a thought for Hippocrates. Without his proto-Freudian musings, we might still be sacrificing goats to cure anxiety. And while his treatments haven’t aged like fine wine, his insight—that minds can get sick, just like bodies—remains timeless. Now, about that wandering uterus theory… let’s agree some ideas belong in the past.
