Lunatic

The word comes from Latin luna, the moon, from the old belief that changes of the moon caused bouts of insanity. In law, a person found to be a lunatic could not manage property, and a court appointed someone to handle it; New York law spoke of committees of the property of lunatics, idiots and habitual drunkards.

In 1800s records lunatic was a standard term, used in court orders, asylum names and relief accounts. Read it as the label of its era for serious mental illness, without a modern diagnosis behind it.