The Book
During the sixteenth century close to thirty German dukes, landgraves, and counts, plus one Holy Roman emperor, were known as mad - so mentally disordered that serious steps had to be taken to remove them from office or to obtain medical care for them. This book is the first study these princes, and a few princesses, as a group in context. The result is a flood of new light on the history of Renaissance medicine and of psychiatry, on German politics and in the century of Reformation, and on the shifting Renaissance definitions of madness.
You can purchase the book from University of Virginia Press here.