The smoke and the flame.. about creativity and psychological disturbance

The smoke and the flame by Dr. Shaker Abdul Hamid ... During the seventeenth century, there was a British doctor, Dr. Thomas Willis (1621-1675), who played an important role in the sciences of anatomy, nerves, and psychiatry. He authored a number of books of significance, in their historical context. In a special edition of his complete works, references were made to "manic-depressive illness," and through beautiful figurative images, Willis compared depression to "smoke," and mania to "flame." In expressive rhetorical images, he also clarified some of the differences and similarities between mania, flame, depression, and smoke, saying: "And we remember that the minds of the depressed were black and mysterious; they cast their darkness over the images of things, to form inside the light of the soul what resembles the rising of a shadow. As for mania, the matter is the opposite. During it, spirits tremble inside a constant glow. They are swept away by an irregular movement that continually destroys and annihilates. And without fever, its heat radiates." These references appeared in Michel Foucault's book "History of Madness," from which we drew inspiration for the title of this book.