Did schizophrenia exist before the eighteenth century?

Madness has resisted a satisfactory categorisation for 2,000 years or more. During the last century attempts to define and understand schizophrenia as an entity within that disorder have failed. This article explores some of the reasons why this may have happened, in particular considering whether the syndrome that we now call schizophrenia has changed in recent years and whether it existed at all four centuries ago. It is based on the author's experience and upon contemporary case histories.