page_title: Lunatic
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lunatic / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The caption reads: "The Nativity of a dumb Lunatic and Ideot." The horoscope of a "Lunatic" according to an astrologer who describes how the positions of the planets Saturn and Mars with respect to the Moon are the cause of "diseases of the mind." See lunacy. The text that accompanies the horoscope reads: "This is the nativity of a person's son now living in Kingsland-Road; he is dumb, and when he is not lunatic, he is mere ideot; but sometimes he is outrageous and mischievous to a great degree, and runs away from his father's house; at other times; when not affected by the Moon, he is quiet and foolish."
context_page_description: Lunatic is an antiquated term referring to a person who is seen as mentally ill, dangerous, foolish, or crazy—conditions once attributed to "lunacy." The word derives from lunaticus meaning "of the moon" or "moonstruck". The term was once commonly used in law.
context_section_description: The term "lunatic" derives from the Latin word lunaticus, which originally referred mainly to epilepsy and madness, as diseases thought to be caused by the moon. The King James Version of the Bible records "lunatick" in the Gospel of Matthew which has been interpreted as a reference to epilepsy. By the fourth and fifth centuries, astrologers were commonly using the term to refer to neurological and psychiatric diseases.Philosophers such as Aristotle and Pliny the Elder argued that the full moon induced insane individuals with bipolar disorder by providing light during nights which would otherwise have been dark, and affecting susceptible individuals through the well-known route of sleep deprivation. Until at least 1700, it was also a common belief that the moon influenced fevers, rheumatism, episodes of epilepsy and other diseases.
caption: The horoscope of a "Lunatic" according to an astrologer who describes how the positions of the planets Saturn and Mars with respect to the moon are the cause of "diseases of the mind".[6]
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