Thank God for the traffic, I thought. At least I will get a chance to enjoy one of my favourite sights – the slow dance of the full moon as it ascends the evening skies.

I was so caught up in the moment that I almost did not notice a motor vehicle driver trying to edge my car into a nearby gully. After that, at least two other vehicles overtook the long line of traffic, almost daring the oncoming motorists to hit them. What’s wrong with these people I thought? Then I began to reflect on my day at the practice. It was one of those days in which I examined a number of anxious and psychotic individuals. This group included someone who only had epileptic seizures around the time of the full moon.

So I called a friend and colleague and asked her opinion. She informed me that when she worked in a nursing home in the United States of America, around the time of the full moon, the staff would carefully monitor the windows and doors of the high-rise building because, inevitably, someone would try to commit suicide. A few she added “actually succeeded”.

In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder thought the full moon gave birth to especially heavy nocturnal dew and caused the brain to become “unnaturally moist”, leading to both madness and epileptic attacks. In the 16th century, Paracelsus wrote that “mania has the following symptoms — frantic behaviour, unreasonableness, constant restlessness, and mischievousness. Some patients suffer from it depending on the phases of the moon.”

Lord Blackstone, an 18th century English jurist, was the first to define a condition of madness exacerbated by the lunar cycle.

“A lunatic, or non compos mentis, is properly one who hath lucid intervals, sometimes enjoying his senses and sometimes not and that frequently depending upon the changes of the moon.”

At the Bethlehem (or Bedlam) Hospital in London, inmates were chained and flogged at certain phases of the moon “to prevent violence”.

Modern thought on the correlation between the lunar cycle and human behaviour is divided between those who give credence to a “lunar effect” (more “lunacy” occurs during certain phases of the moon) and those who debunk this idea as fanciful thinking — a “Transylvania effect”.

It is well known that it is the regular and predictable cycles of the moon and sun that regulate the ocean’s tides. Research has established numerous links between human behaviour and external natural cycles ranging from weather and solar radiation to phases of the moon and planetary cycles.

The energy practitioner with whom I share offices, says that “our energy bodies respond to the rise and fall of the tides (barometric pressure)”. It is thought that at the time of the full moon our energy bodies are prone to separation of the two major meridians that protect our bodies. These meridians are the central, in the front, and the governing in the back.

The central meridian interacts with the environment and other people, while the governing meridian replenishes the energy from the chakras which run along the spine to the top of the head. When those two meridians separate we are vulnerable, that is, prone to unusual behaviours.

EPILEPSY

Since ancient times there has been a suggested connection between the phases of the moon and epilepsy. It continues to be reported in modern times.

In a study reported in the 2013 issue of the journal Epilepsy and Behavior, researchers investigated the potential association between the moon phases and epilepsy by looking at Internet epilepsy search trends.

Although they highlighted that the relationship between the lunar cycle and recurrent seizures is unclear, the researchers noted that seizure-related emergency admissions significantly clustered in days with a full moon. Additionally, they reported that based on a small series of 10 children, the incidence of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy “was suggested as being the highest at a full moon, followed by waxing moon and new moon”.

However, no association with the lunar cycle was found using a large death certificate dataset with 409 probable cases of sudden unexplained death in epilepsy.

MURDER

In 18th century England, a person who committed a murder during a full moon could plead “lunacy” and get a lighter sentence.

In the 1970s, psychologist Arnold Lieber and his colleagues decided to test the old belief of full moon “lunacy”. The researchers collected data on 1,887 homicides committed over a 15-year period in Dade County, Miami. The study showed that the homicides appeared to rise and fall with the phases of the moon. In other words, the murder rate rose with the full or new moon.

Dr Lieber theorised that since humans are composed mostly of water (like the earth), our bodies might have “biological tides” that influence our emotions. When a person is already on psychologically shaky ground, such a biological tide can push him or her over the edge. However, when other scientists re-evaluated the research, the alleged pattern disappeared.

HOSPITAL WORKERS AND THE FULL MOON

Hospital workers have noticed increases in strange behaviours with the full moon. A study published in the

Journal of Emergency Medicine in 1987 found that 80 per cent of emergency room nurses and 64 per cent of physicians agree that the moon affects their patients’ behaviour.

BIRTHS

In an analysis of 33,000 births, Dr W Buehler, a German researcher, found that there was a significant number of male births during the waxing moon. Astronomer Daniel Caton compared 70 million human births in the United States with lunar phase, and he found no associations.

Similar work by Frederic Chambat turned up no pattern among 14.5 million European births. In a study published in 2005 in the

American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, researchers analysed 564,039 births across 62 lunar cycles that were identified from North Carolina birth certificate data from 1997 to 2001. They noted no predictable influence of the lunar cycle on deliveries or complications.

What do you think? Can the full moon affect us or does this notion only exist in our imaginations?

Dr Jacqueline E Campbell is a family physician, university lecturer and pharmacologist. She is the author of the book “A patient’s guide to the treatment of diabetes mellitus.” Email:drjcampbell14@yahoo.com