2/23/2023 0 Comments Moons of madness access codes![]() ![]() 7 Benjamin Rush, the father of American psychiatry, kept accurate records of patients' conditions during the phases of the moon but observed a behavioural association in only “few cases.” 1 ![]() Some patients suffer from it depending on the phases of the moon.” 6 Lord Blackstone, an 18th-century English jurist, was the first to define a condition of madness exacerbated by the lunar cycle: “A lunatic, or non compos mentis, is properly one who hath lucid intervals, sometimes enjoying his senses and sometimes not and that frequently depending upon the changes of the moon.” 6 During the 19th century, the German psychologist Ewald Hering observed in his textbook of psychiatry that “with full moon, increasing mania.” 6 At the Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital in London, inmates were chained and flogged at certain phases of the moon “to prevent violence.” This barbarous practice was abolished only in 1808 through the efforts of John Haslam, the hospital's apothecary. In the 16th century, Paracelsus wrote that “mania has the following symptoms: frantic behaviour, unreasonableness, constant restlessness and mischievousness. Perhaps this lies at the origin of the association between madness and the full moon. 6 Even partial sleep deprivation over the course of a single night can induce mania, 6 and it is plausible that sleep disturbance during a full moon may function as a positive feedback once a manic episode has begun in a predisposed individual. Full-moon nights are 12 times brighter (under a clear sky) than at first or last quarter, and therefore it is likely that people stayed up later and slept less than the rest of the time. One obvious explanation is that, before the advent of gas lighting at the beginning of the 19th century, the light of the moon permitted outdoor activities that were otherwise impossible. 5Īll this being said, the association between lunar phases and human behaviour preoccupies us less today than in the past. 2 Most superstition and many studies associated with the influence of the moon on human behaviour take into consideration only the full moon in the synodic cycle. This is the time it takes the moon to complete an orbit around the earth (29.53 days), corrected for the earth's orbit around the sun. Astronomy also defines 5 different lunar cycles based on different parameters of time and distance from the earth: tropical, draconic, sidereal, anomalistic and synodic - the synodic cycle being the interval between 2 successive new moons. There are 8 phases of the moon, which succeed each other with a periodicity of 3.69 days: new, waxing crescent, first quarter, waxing gibbous, full, waning gibbous, last quarter, waning crescent. ![]() The observations made by Galileo Galilei of the phases of the moon remain correct in today's astronomical understanding. But the moon exerts no influence on smaller bodies of water such as lakes and even some seas, and the difference between a person's weight in the presence of the moon's gravity and his or her weight if there were no moon is “less than the effect of a mosquito on one's shoulder.” 4 It is also important to realize that these gravitational forces are dependent on the distance between the earth and the moon, and on the alignment of the sun, earth and moon, and not on the phases of the moon. Not everyone realizes that, although the moon is able to move oceans, this is achieved only because the moon's gravity acts over the 12 800-km diameter of the earth, which pulls back with a comparable force. In the popular imagination, lunar influences on the human mind are often ascribed to the moon's gravitational effects. 2 In 1995, Vance reported that as many as 81% of mental health professionals believed that the full moon alters individual behaviour. A study by Rotton and Kelly in 1985 showed that 50% of university students believed that people act strangely during a full moon. Hippocrates wrote that “no physician should be entrusted with the treatment of disease who was ignorant of the science of astronomy.” 1Even when, in the 17th century, Johannes Kepler caused the disciplines of astrology and astronomy to diverge with his discovery that the motions of the planets followed mathematical laws, the belief in the moon's influence lingered. The belief that the moon exerts an influence on human affairs has survived rather obstinately through history. Someone mutters, “Damn! It must be a full moon!” Six patients walk into the emergency department asking for opiates while 3 code blues are announced on the PA. ![]()
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