blog 005 - the stone of madness (article)

The Stone Of Madness

     Most of the time the feeling of a strong pathology, as is madness or any derivation of it; the presence of doubt as to whether something is dominating the cavity of the brain, would be a period of perpetual questioning, chimes that would signal the deviation of the reasons, to be able to demonstrate that the need to escape the soul was the despair that many want when suffering from something as shocking as madness is. But what if instead of looking at modern madness where it could be treated, we were to look at medieval madness?

     The Middle Ages, is a very multifaceted historical period where in its passions, there were also extreme madnesses. It was very poor for the requirement of knowledge, lack of understanding for not very sane people; calling madness as a disease far from being a defect of the brain, rather seeing it as a phenomenon with supernatural origins, divine punishments, which led to a wide variety of social responses and treatments often brutal or ineffective, which would reveal the great evolution of psychiatry that has taken place over time.

     Psychology and psychiatry were premature twins, which barely covered the needs of those who needed them; leading to peculiar practices with the little that was known at the time. Achieving this way, the birth of the method of the “extraction of the stone of madness”, a very rudimentary trepanation that sustained the belief of the existence of a stone whose objective was to populate the brain, to harvest the maximum madness; or well, any psychological illness that the subject was suffering from: In a few words, an uninformed medieval lobotomy, in demonstration of the absurdity of the time.

     The procedure was simple and very painful, where it was based on opening the cranial cavity of the patient to make the famous extraction of the “stone”, using crude tools such as knives, chisels and very sharp stones to pierce the skin to the skull, removing a piece of the brain, where doctors came to the conclusion that that piece was a stone, the mother of all evils of the person who possessed it.

     This not only had an impact in the field of medicine, but also in the field of art, where the painter Bosch sought to portray his most sincere opinion on the matter, and in 1500, the painting was published. Using a symbolism capable of minimizing the medical and religious profession: The doctor, positioned on the left side of the painting, wears a funnel as a cap and a vase on his belt, signifying the lack of information and the stupidity of carrying out a surgery of such magnitude. In addition, during this extraction, a tulip grows out of the patient's skull, suggesting that the doctor was not only the only one lacking information, but also demonstrating the doctor's innocence. On the other side, members of the church would witness the act, looking at the feat as stubborn people, who at the same time support the ideology that madness was something of sin, hence the book on the head of the nun; to portray ignorance and superstition.

     Bosch was not only trying to say the weird smell that emanates from this activity, but it is something that can be evidenced until these last days or mostly in the twentieth century where the world could hardly breathe from so many misunderstandings, wars, conflicts, psychological tests, which was populated in the air; but that's where we come from and so we will continue.

     In poetry it was a great metaphor for the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, in her work called The Extraction of the Stone of Madness, she uses a disease buried in the mind, something difficult to remove, using various allegories she explores the massiveness of human stagnation in extremely revealing verses, having as a primordial symbolism the stone of madness, a detrimental factor of the spirit and its overthrowing office in the inner happiness.

     Having both perspectives on the table, both Pizarnik's and Bosch's, one should faithfully question the practices implemented and how they should be studied; to see if they really heal us or sink us further into the world of madness and the elongated nuance of its roots.