http://positivetranceformations.com.au/blog/nothing-new-under-the-sun/ In Hippocrates’ time, the blame for a tendency towards depression was put on an imbalance of the four “bodily humours” (blood, black bile, bile and phlegm) where black bile (the Greek for this gives us the word “melancholy”) was found in excess. Today, we know that they weren’t far wrong.
2. We tend to think of all the things for
which people come to get help from
hypnotherapy as being modern
diseases or conditions.
3. Surely, people reason, we didn’t
all live such stressful lives in the
past and people didn’t suffer so
much from conditions like
depression or panic attacks and
anxiety disorders, and we didn’t
turn to hypnotherapy for help with
quitting smoking or losing weight.
4. Well, the answer to this is both yes
and no. Certainly, the pace of modern
life means that the demands put on us
are more urgent and we have more
deadlines to face these days, which
wasn’t the case in the past.
5. If you were, say, a farmer, you might
have had to work extremely hard, but
if your plough horse lost a shoe and
meant that you couldn’t finish
ploughing that field
6. half a day while you went to the
blacksmith wasn’t too much of a
problem in the long run and you could
still get your crops sown in time.
7. Some of the stresses of the past
might have also meant that people
enjoyed the present moment a lot
more (a great way of heading off
problems with anxiety and
depression).
8. If the Black Plague was sweeping the
country or if you had been invaded by
a foreign army, it was stressful, all
right,
9. but this could have the effect of
making you enjoy pleasant pleasures
here and now while you can, as the
good times might not have lasted
long.
10. But people in the past did have
problems with depression and anxiety
disorder and panic attacks.
12. The combination of anxiety disorder
and panic attacks tended to be
lumped together as hysteria, and it
was hysteria that good old Dr
Sigmund Freud was trying to find a
cure for when he discovered the
clinical uses of hypnosis.
14. In the very early days of medicine, in
the time of Classical Greece when
Hippocrates was practising and
establishing the principles of
professional medicine that are still
active today,
15. people noticed that certain personality
types had a greater tendency towards
depression.
17. In Hippocrates’ time, the blame for a
tendency towards depression was put
on an imbalance of the four “bodily
humours” (blood, black bile, bile and
phlegm) where black bile (the Greek
for this gives us the word
“melancholy”) was found in excess.
18. Today, we know that they weren’t far
wrong, as often, it’s an imbalance of
brain chemicals and hormones that
creates a tendency towards
depression.
