Stone of madness

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Hieronymus Bosch, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness Hieronymus Bosch-Removing the Rocks from the Head-Detail.jpg
Hieronymus Bosch, The Extraction of the Stone of Madness

The stone of madness, also called stone of folly, was a hypothetical stone in a patient's head, thought to be the cause of madness, idiocy or dementia. From the 15th century onwards, removing the stone by trepanation was proposed as a remedy. [1] [2] This procedure is demonstrated in the painting The Extraction of the Stone of Madness by Hieronymus Bosch. [3]

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References

  1. Vigué, Jordi (2002). Great Masters of Western Art . Watson-Guptill. p.  71. ISBN   0-8230-2113-0. There was a popular belief that a so-called "stone of madness" caused idiocy or dementia. To cure this, it was believed necessary to remove a section of the ...
  2. Shorter, Edward (1997). A History of Psychiatry . Wiley. p.  225. ISBN   0-471-24531-3. stone of madness.
  3. Povoledo, Elisabetta (October 27, 2008). "In Rome, a New Museum Invites a Hands-On Approach to Insanity". The Economist . Retrieved 2008-10-28. The logo of the Mind’s Museum is an overturned funnel. It is a reference to a 15th-century painting by Hieronymus Bosch that depicts a doctor using a scalpel to extract an object (the supposed “stone of madness”) from the skull of a patient. The doctor is wearing a funnel as a hat.