Ibn Sina, and Ibn al-Qayyim

Two more, and the second is contested, so it is presented as contested.

Ibn Sina, in the Canon, put melancholia on the bodily side of the ledger. As reported in the secondary literature, he described it as arising from an excess of black bile in the brain, with involvement of the heart, and he set out its early and its later phases in detail. He did not reach for spirits to explain it. That is worth knowing if you have been taught that the Muslim tradition had only one category available.

Ibn al-Qayyim is the figure most often quoted on the other side, for the position that seizures come in two kinds, one from the humours and one from spirits. Scholars still argue about how far that goes. Two things are worth holding on to. He still prescribed medical treatment, alongside strengthening the person religiously. And he did not hand anybody a test for telling the two apart.

Neither will this course.