The occurrence of disturbed behaviour in people with jaundice may have been described in antiquity by Hippocrates of Cos (–370 BCE). Celsus and Galen (first and third century respectively) both recognised the condition. Many modern descriptions of the link between liver disease and neuropsychiatric symptoms were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; for instance, Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682–1771) reported in 1761 that it was a progressive condition.
