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In the nosology of premodern medicine, there was a medical diagnosis called "Melancholia". It corresponded to an excess of "black bile" one of the four humors - the fundamental fluids of the body which conferred personality traits. The word melancholy is actually derived from the greek word from black bile. The diagnosis of melancholia lingered through medicine for centuries taking on a variety of different meanings related to sadness and lethargy. Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed with melancholia and was prescribed mercury as a cure. All of this is now correctly understood as pseudoscience.
"Depression" is simply the modern rebranding of melancholia. It means pretty much the same thing: a nebulous emotional condition involving excessive sadness. The proposed etiology of depression is similarly pseudoscientific. The idea that depression results from a "chemical imbalance", a disruption of the fundamental fluids that constitute personality, bares striking similarity to the notion of the abnormal humors which were thought to cause melancholia. Furthermore, the "chemical imbalance" theory has been completely repudiated by all empirical attempts to confirm it. There is not a single study that links depressive symptoms to some kind of "serotonin depletion".
For all of medicine's history, there have been people who experience excessive sadness for no clear reason. Instead of just admitting this, doctors of the past resorted to the baseless theory of "melancholia". The same thing happens today. No one has a clue why people suffer prolonged sadness. Every attempt to understand "depression" on a biological basis has been a complete failure. But instead of simply admitting this problem, the medical community has created the baseless theory of "Major Depressive Disorder".
In one hundred years, no one will take "depression" seriously. The doctors who diagnosed it will be regarded in the same way that the doctors who diagnosed melancholia are.
In the nosology of premodern medicine, there was a medical diagnosis called "Melancholia". It corresponded to an excess of "black bile" one of the four humors - the fundamental fluids of the body which conferred personality traits. The word melancholy is actually derived from the greek word from black bile. The diagnosis of melancholia lingered through medicine for centuries taking on a variety of different meanings related to sadness and lethargy. Abraham Lincoln was diagnosed with melancholia and was prescribed mercury as a cure. All of this is now correctly understood as pseudoscience.
"Depression" is simply the modern rebranding of melancholia. It means pretty much the same thing: a nebulous emotional condition involving excessive sadness. The proposed etiology of depression is similarly pseudoscientific. The idea that depression results from a "chemical imbalance", a disruption of the fundamental fluids that constitute personality, bares striking similarity to the notion of the abnormal humors which were thought to cause melancholia. Furthermore, the "chemical imbalance" theory has been completely repudiated by all empirical attempts to confirm it. There is not a single study that links depressive symptoms to some kind of "serotonin depletion".
For all of medicine's history, there have been people who experience excessive sadness for no clear reason. Instead of just admitting this, doctors of the past resorted to the baseless theory of "melancholia". The same thing happens today. No one has a clue why people suffer prolonged sadness. Every attempt to understand "depression" on a biological basis has been a complete failure. But instead of simply admitting this problem, the medical community has created the baseless theory of "Major Depressive Disorder".
In one hundred years, no one will take "depression" seriously. The doctors who diagnosed it will be regarded in the same way that the doctors who diagnosed melancholia are.
