When Saul became jealous and suspicious of David, David sought refuge with Achish, the Philistine. the King of Gath, the city from which Goliath had come. According to one version of the event, David was uncertain of his reception by his former enemy and pretended to be mad:
10. And David arose and fled that day for fear of Saul, and went to
Achish the king of Gath.
11. And the servants of Achish said unto him, Is not this David the
king of the land? did they not sing one to another of him in dances, saying,
Saul hath slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands?
12. And David laid up these words in his heart, and was sore afraid
of Achish the king of Gath.
13. And he changed his behaviour before them, and feigned himself
mad in their hands, and scrabbled on the doors of the gate, and let his
spittle fall down upon his beard.
14. Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is
mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me?
15. Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow
to play the mad man in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?
1 Samuel 22:1. David therefore departed thence, and escaped to the
cave Adullam…
This passage provides evidence that insanity occurred in ancient Israel
and was well recognized by distinctive behavior. Furthermore, that it would
be faked to acheive personal safety suggests that the mentally disturbed
were generally seen as harmless and inoffensive to authority. It also shows
a wandering madman turned away as a burden an nuisance.
A case
of "feigned" neurasthenia during World War I
At the same time that many solodiers during World
War 1 were diagnosing themselves as "shell shocked" to escape from battle,
the military also found it useful to redifine open dissent as shell shock.
One such case was that of the poet Sigfried Sassoon: On medical leave in
England after having been wounded in battle, Sassoon published a letter
announcing his refusal to return to battle as a protest over what he regarded
as the government's unnecessary prolongation of the war. His friend Robert
Graves arranged to have a medical board hear Sassoon's case. According
to Graves, one doctor on the board was responsible for declaring Sassoon
neurasthenic and in need of treatment. Considering the punishments handed
out ot other soldiers whose dissent was less dramatic than Sassoon's, it
seems clear that the membeers of the board must have found this diagnosis
a convenient way to avoid a public confrontation with such an articulate
and recently decorated soldier. Sass was successfully "treated" by the
eminent neurologist, pswychologist and anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers and
soon returned to battle.
From Edward M. Brown, "Shell Shock and the Legitimation of the Neuroses,"
in Science, Technology and the Military, eds. E. Mendelsohn, M.
R. Smith, P. Weingart, [Kluwer,1988]
Now the spirit of Yahweh had left Saul and an evil
spirit from Yahweh filled him with terror. Saul's servants said to him,
'Look, an evil spirit of God is the cause of your terror. Let our lord
give the order, and your servants who wait on you will look for a skilled
harpist; when the evil spirit of God troubles you, the harpist will play
and you will recover.' Saul said to his servants, 'Find me a man who plays
well and bring him to me'. One of the soldiers then spoke up. 'I have seen
one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlememite' he said; 'he is a skilled player,
a brave man and a fighter, p;rudent in speech, a man of presence, and Yahweh
is with him.' At this, Saul sent messengers to Jesse saying, 'Ssend me
David your son who is with the sheep'. Jesse took five loaves, a skin of
wine and a kid, and sent them to Saul by David his son. And so David came
to Saul and entered his service; Saul loved him greatly and David became
his armour-bearer. Then Saul sent to Jesse saying, 'Let David enter my
service; he has won my favour'. And whenever the spirit from God troubled
Saul, David took the harp and played; then Saul grew calm, and recovered,
and the evil spirit left him. [1 Samuel 16:14-23; The Jerusalem Bible]
To Acrisius and Eurydice, Lacedaemon's daughter was
born a daughter Danae; and Proetus and Stheneboea had Lysippe, Iphinoe,
and Iphianassa. When these three had grown
up, they went mad, as Hesiod says, because they did not accept the
mystic rites of Dionysus, although Acusilaus says that it was because they
slighted the wooden image of
Hera. In their maddened state they rambled over all of Argos, then,
passing through Arcadia, they ran through the wilderness in total disarray.
Melampus, the son of Amythaon
and Abas' daughter Eidomene, a soothsayer and the first one to seek
cures by means of drugs and purgations, promised to heal the maidens in
return for a third of the kingdom.
When Proteus would not engage Melampus for such a fee, his daughters
turned even madder than before, and moreover the other women joined them,
leaving their homes,
slaying their children, and roaming wildly off into the wilderness.
When the matter reached a critical level of disaster, Proteus agreed to
the stipulated amount, but now
Melampus asked for another third of the kingdom for his brother Bias.
Taking care lest the fee rise even higher while the treatment was postponed,
Proetus agreed to these
terms. Melampus then took the strongest of the young men with him,
and with loud cries and a sort of dance of inspired incoherence routed
the women in a group out of the
mountains and into Sicyon. In the course of the chase the oldest daughter
Iphinoe passed away, but the other two fortunately were purged and regained
their sanity Proetus
married them to Melampus and Bias.
The Library of Greek Mythology by Apollodorus, Translated, with notes
and indices by Keith Aldrich [Coronado Press: Lawrence Kansas, 1975] book
II, #26, pp. 32-3.
The daughters of Proetus, the king of Argos,
had taken vows never to marry. they were opposed to the worship of Dionysus
and stole gold from the statue of Hera. As a result,
divine power made them mad and they believed themselves to be cows;
they would leave the royal palace to run wild, lowing in the forest. Melampus,
the seer who lived about
three centuries before Homer and who is supposed to have cured Hercules
of his mental trouble, was summoned to minister to the royal cow-daughters.
Melampus was an
observant man, not only a seer; he had often noticed that goats who
had eaten white hellebore purged themselves abundantly. He promptly mixed
hellebore with milk and
administered it to the daughters of Proetus; then he had robust youngsters
chase them over the fields till they were nearly exhausted. Bathing in
the fountains of Arcadia
followed and the cure was successfully completed.
Gregory Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psychology, [W. W. Norton &
Co., New York, 1941] p.37.
A strong man, by trade a blacksmith, having been liable, from a boy, to the incubus and vertigo, which had been brought on him by a fright, fell down suddenly in the winter-time, and complain'd, in confus'd words, of an internal pain in his breast. Being immediately brought into the hospital, he answer'd scarcely any thingto those who ask'd him questions; but shut his eyes, and cover'd his face with the sheet, like a man out of his senses. He washot at the same time, and trembl'd' nor had drunkenness, or any other cause of that kind preceeded; and a fever likewise attended. On the following day, he began to leap out of bed, to cry out, to threaten, and even to strike, all about him; so that being evidently a maniac, it was necessary that he should be confin'd with bands. He cried out violently and continually; and, at the same time, his whole body was agitated with convulsive motions. Then the physician, having order'd a vein in the foot to be open'd, and a pound of blood to be taken away, also ordered the cataplasm I have told you of [fresh cheese, of the coarser sort, mix'd with oil of violets] to be laid upon his head after being shaved. Do you ask me what was the event? Why by this means, within twelve hours, he was restored to perfect sanity; but whether the cure was accidental, or the effect of blood-letting only, or in some measure owing to the assistance of the external remedy [the cataplasm], I will leave you to determine. Those who foment the heads of insane patients with milk, witll readily believe, that the cataplasm contributed thereto.
Giovanni Battista Morgagni, The Seats and Causes of Diseases Investigated by Anatomy, [English edition, 1769, reprinted 1960, original 1761] v1. 149-150.