You can't write about the past and ignore religion. It was such a fundamental mind-shaping driving force for pre-modern societies. I'm very interested in what religion does to us - its capacity to create love and empathy or hatred and violence.
In the history of the treatment of depression there was the dunking stool purging of the bowels of black bile hoses attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient.
