Content area
Full Text
The Moon and Madness By McCrae Niall. Imprint Academic. 2011.£17.95 (pb). 250 pp. ISBN: 9781845402143
This is a wide-ranging book. Although the focus is on the purported relationship between mental illness and the lunar cycle, it touches on much more. The richness and breadth of sources of this disquisition is both the strength and weakness of this book. From the ancient Greeks to our day, there has been fascination with the possibility that the Moon is capable of influencing mood, behaviour, diseases such as epilepsy, and mental illness. By the 19th century, Leuret and Moreau, working in France, had conclusively demonstrated that the lunar cycle...