Phrenitis in Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio

Abstract

In this paper, I examine Gregory of Nyssa's concept of phrenitis, as posited in the twelfth and thirteenth chapters of his De hominis opificio. Using as a starting point an episode where Gregory depicts himself taking care of a phrenitis patient, I compare the symptoms and the causes of phrenitis, as described by Gregory, with systematic discussions of the disease found in the extant medical sources of antiquity. The paper also investigates Gregory's causal explanation of the disease, posited in the twelfth chapter of his anthropological treatise, and demonstrates that Gregory considered as the seat of phrenitis the anatomical entity that is responsible for pleuritis. The paper concludes that Gregory most probably conflated and modified the explanations of two similar diseases in order to defend his views about the seat of the hegemonikon.