A History of Madness in Sixteenth-Century Germany (review)

Although the topic of melancholy and madness is currently one of the most thoroughly studied subjects of the early modern period, this study by a major historian still breaks new ground. The restriction of Erik Midelfort's research to sixteenth-century Germany might seem to indicate a narrowness of focus, but this is only superficially so. The book contains a multitude of primarily thematic studies: the history of Saint Vitus's dance, the notion of madness and melancholy in Luther and Paracelsus, the rise of observation in Galenic "psychiatry," the history of the insanity defense, the function of court fools and their difference from "natural" fools, the use of pilgrimages to shrines for curing madness, and finally the treatment of madness in hospitals. The author occasionally glances across Germany's borders to Italy and France and, according to the county sheriff's principle of hot pursuit (to which he once appeals), pursues his subjects sometimes to the seventeenth century and even beyond

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