What Does the Word Lunatic Have to do with the Moon?

by Gaines Arnold

People have always been superstitious and many have thought that objects that people the night had some particular sinister purpose. This may not be true of the stars, but just consider the moon which has for many centuries put people in mind of the unknown. The moon rules the night and is a mysterious being that was once thought to induce people to madness. But the present question is, “What does the word ‘lunatic’ have to do with the moon?”

Luna was the goddess of the moon in ancient Grecian mythology and she was said to affect people who walked at night with a type of dementia that was termed lunacy. Therefore, lunatics were people who had been to much under the power of the moon and thus were unstable during the day.

The moon has also been responsible for many other supposed mental disorders which are now known to be chemical imbalances in the brain. Bipolar disorder was once called manic-Depressive and before that sufferers were thought to be affected by the phases of the moon. When the light of the moon shines into someone’s room it can become very bright and arrest the normal sleep pattern that one is supposed to go through. This will cause sleep deprivation which, in those times, was thought to make susceptible people cycle from depression to mania. Later it was found that this explanation had no basis in fact.

Mental hospital used to be called lunatic asylums and the patients lunatics. Every effort was made to keep the windows covered at night because it was believed that the moon and the shadows that it caused were deleterious to the people within the building. That the moon could have any effect at all is now seen to be ridiculous, but in times when the science was not available to explain why different things happened people had to come up with some way to explain the unexplainable. The moon was often blamed.

So, in asking what does the word lunatic have to do with the moon we find several different explanations, but the strangest may be what ancient people’s used to try and decipher why there cattle were ripped apart during the full moon. Of course they came to believe that it was some sort of human animal cross, usually either bear or wolf, which had superior strength and need the moon to exact a change in form. The most likely for their animals being killed in greater numbers during these times is that predators are much more active during a full moon because there is more light for them to see. They did not maul the animals or people they fed on any worse they could just find them easier.

So what does this teach people about what the word lunatic have to do with the moon? It describes a pattern of humans trying to explain the unknown in the best way that they know how and often getting it wrong. The only real affect the moon has on people is to in some small way affect them gravitationally. But, hospital workers will swear that there are many more cases on the night of a full moon.

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