I would imagine people who were seen as outside the norm, creatives, inventors leaders, might have had hypomanic episodes. Town drunks, eccentric witches who lived at the edges of town, might have been depressed. The rest were probably locked away, or driven out of town, or exorcised. And many others were probably never recognized as ill, but suffered in silence. Or dare I dream that there was once a time when any eccentricities were not pathologised and were simply accepted as part of the range of human emotion and experience. I think modern pressures and requirements of conformity contribute greatly to bipolar being classified as a disease state.

Great post! Really makes me think!