Thanks, guys! This is a big help.
TerzaRima said:
Dawn--IIRC, people of the time tended to correlate mental illness with criminality (the famous Bedlam hospital shared property and administration with a prison). Accordingly, treatment could be fairly punitive--cold baths, purges, starvation. Also, the idea of institutionalizing mentally ill people was probably just taking off in the mid-1600s.
I guess that explains the site's sections on Binding, Chains, and Whipping.
donroc said:
Borago officinalis, BorageThe ancient Greek naturalist Pliny said that borage ‘maketh a man merry and joyful.’ Dioscorides, the first century Greek physician, mentioned the use of borage to ‘comfort the heart, purge melancholy and quiet the lunatic person.’
John Evelyn, the seventeenth century English herbalist, spoke of borage ‘to revive the hypochondriac and cheer the hard student’, while his contemporary Culpepper used the plant for ‘putrid and pestilential fever, the venom of serpents, jaundice, consumption, sore throat and rheumatism.’
I heard about borage, but I wasn't sure if they were still using it during my time; looks like they were.
girlyswot said:
My guess is that if he's on board ship the most likely treatment was confinement - locked cabin, shackles etc. And the next most likely treatment was being thrown overboard. Sailors were/are pretty superstitious about that sort of thing.
Never heard of that one! I might need to check that out.
pdr said:
General reaction would be the humours were out of balance so purges and leeches and other nasty treatment.
Also another common reaction would be a punishment from God to the patient, s/he was ill because s/he was a sinner, or the patient was not Godly enough and demons were tormenting hir!
Poor guy's going to have both the surgeon
and the chaplain on his back!
JoNightshade said:
ETA: Also, has something happened to trigger your character's depression?
It's more of an ongoing problem than a triggered event. Being a lifelong victim of bullying doesn't help, though. Neither did finding out his "sister" was his mother at her deathbed, joining the navy to avoid jail time, etc.
JoNightshade said:
How is he actually BEHAVING? Just depressed, or is he trying to self-harm, or what? This would determine how others would treat him.
Probably the most obvious sign would be the occasional crying for no apparent reason. (Sure, he waits 'til he thinks everyone's asleep, but he's been overheard on occasion.) Other signs include going through the motions of living and working; lack of sociability; lack of appetite; poor sleep; and snapping at anyone who calls him on his mental problems. He's also prone to excessive drinking, but I don't think anyone would make the connection.
As far as self-harm goes, he comtemplates suicide a lot. If that were to become known for some reason, there could be problems, I guess.
