The Anatomy of Melancholy

by Robert Burton

• General, as of [Memb. 1.]
  • Body, as ill digestion, crudity, wind, dry brains, hard belly, thick blood, much waking, heaviness, and palpitation of heart, leaping in many places, &c., [Subs. 1.]
  • or Mind
    • Common to all or most.
      • Fear and sorrow without a just cause, suspicion, jealousy, discontent, solitariness, irksomeness, continual cogitations, restless thoughts, vain imaginations, &c. [Subs. 2.]
    • Or Particular to private persons, according to [Subs. 3. 4.]
      • Celestial influences, as ♄ ♃ ♂, &c. parts of the body, heart, brain, liver, spleen, stomach, &c.
      • Humours
      • Or mixed of these four humours adust, or not adust, infinitely varied.
      • Their several customs, conditions, inclinations, discipline, &c.
      • Continuance of time as the humour is intended or remitted, &c.
• Simple, or as it is mixed with other diseases, apoplexies, gout, caninus appetitus, &c. so the symptoms are various.

♋ Particular symptoms to the three distinct species. [Sect. 3. Memb. 2.]

• Head melancholy. [Subs. 1.]
  • In body
    • Headache, binding and heaviness, vertigo, lightness, singing of the ears, much waking, fixed eyes, high colour, red eyes, hard belly, dry body; no great sign of melancholy in the other parts.
  • Or In mind.
    • Continual fear, sorrow, suspicion, discontent, superfluous cares, solicitude, anxiety, perpetual cogitation of such toys they are possessed with, thoughts like dreams, &c.
• Hypochondriacal, or windy melancholy. [Subs. 2.]
  • In body
    • Wind, rumbling in the guts, bellyache, heat in the bowels, convulsions, crudities, short wind, sour and sharp belchings, cold sweat, pain in the left side, suffocation, palpitation, heaviness of the heart, singing in the ears, much spittle, and moist, &c.
  • Or In mind.
    • Fearful, sad, suspicious, discontent, anxiety, &c. Lascivious by reason of much wind, troublesome dreams, affected by fits, &c.
• Over all the body. [Subs. 3.]
  • In body
    • Black, most part lean, broad veins, gross, thick blood, their hemorrhoids commonly stopped, &c.
  • Or In mind.
    • Fearful, sad, solitary, hate light, averse from company, fearful dreams, &c.
• Symptoms of nuns, maids, and widows melancholy, in body and mind, &c. [[Subs. 4]]
• A reason of these symptoms. [Memb. 3.]
  • Why they are so fearful, sad, suspicious without a cause, why solitary, why melancholy men are witty, why they suppose they hear and see strange voices, visions, apparitions.
  • Why they prophesy, and speak strange languages; whence comes their crudity, rumbling, convulsions, cold sweat, heaviness of heart, palpitation, cardiaca, fearful dreams, much waking, prodigious fantasies.

• Tending to good, as
  • Morphew, scabs, itch, breaking out, &c.
  • Black jaundice.
  • If the hemorrhoids voluntarily open.
  • If varices appear.
• Tending to evil, as
  • Leanness, dryness, hollow-eyed, &c.
  • Inveterate melancholy is incurable.
  • If cold, it degenerates often into epilepsy, apoplexy, dotage, or into blindness.
  • If hot, into madness, despair, and violent death.
• Corollaries and questions.
  • The grievousness of this above all other diseases.
  • The diseases of the mind are more grievous than those of the body.
  • Whether it be lawful, in this case of melancholy, for a man to offer violence to himself. Neg.
  • How a melancholy or mad man offering violence to himself, is to be censured.

THE FIRST PARTITION.

THE FIRST SECTION, MEMBER, SUBSECTION.

Man's Excellency, Fall, Miseries, Infirmities; The causes of them.

Man's Excellency.] Man the most excellent and noble creature of the world, “the principal and mighty work of God, wonder of Nature,” as Zoroaster calls him; audacis naturae miraculum, “the [820]marvel of marvels,” as Plato; “the [821]abridgment and epitome of the world,” as Pliny; microcosmus, a little world, a model of the world, [822]sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all the creatures in it; to whose empire they are subject in particular, and yield obedience; far surpassing all the rest, not in body only, but in soul; [823]imaginis imago, [824]created to God's own [825]image, to that immortal and incorporeal substance, with all the faculties and powers belonging unto it; was at first pure, divine, perfect, happy, [826] “created after God in true holiness and righteousness;” Deo congruens, free from all manner of infirmities, and put in Paradise, to know God, to praise and glorify him, to do his will, Ut diis consimiles parturiat deos (as an old poet saith) to propagate the church.

Man's Fall and Misery.] But this most noble creature, Heu tristis, et lachrymosa commutatio ([827]one exclaims) O pitiful change! is fallen from that he was, and forfeited his estate, become miserabilis homuncio, a castaway, a caitiff, one of the most miserable creatures of the world, if he be considered in his own nature, an unregenerate man, and so much obscured by his fall that (some few relics excepted) he is inferior to a beast, [828]“Man in honour that understandeth not, is like unto beasts that perish,” so David esteems him: a monster by stupend metamorphoses, [829]a fox, a dog, a hog, what not? Quantum mutatus ab illo? How much altered from that he was; before blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed; [830]“He must eat his meat in sorrow,” subject to death and all manner of infirmities, all kind of calamities.