Abstract
Robert Burton was a parson. Coming as a student to Braenose College in Oxford in 1593, he was elected to Christ Church in 1597 and spent the rest of his life there, most of it in his study. Holbrook Jackson in the Introduction to the 1932 edition of the Anatomy1 describes Burton as a “good humored pessimist—a recluse but no hermit,” an example of how “diligence and an enjoyment of drudgery can accomplish miracles in the spare time of a busy life.” Sir, William Osier considered the Anatomy of Melancholy as the greatest medical treatise ever written by a layman. However, it is now found in most bookstores on the shelf marked “English Literature,” looking in today’s paperbacked world somewhat too large for its cover. Its many pages explore depression conceived in the broadest sense, from “love melancholy” to the “causeless sadness” the psychotic depressive.
Such as have the Moon, Saturn, Mercury misaffected in their genitures; such as live in over-cold or over-hot climes; such as are born of melancholy parents; as offend in those six non-natural things, are black, or of a high sanguine complexion; that have little heads, that have a hot heart, moist brain, hot liver and cold stomach, have been long sick; such as are solitary by nature, great students, given to much contemplation, lead a life out of action, are most subject to melancholy. Of sexes both, but men more often; yet women misaffected are far more violent, and grievously troubled. Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy. Of peculiar times: old age, from which natural melancholy is almost an inseparable accident; but this artificial malady is more frequent in such as are of a middle age. Some assign forty years, Gariopontus thirty. Jobertus excepts neither young nor old from this adventitious. Robert Burton1 The Anatomy of Melancholy
(1621)
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Whybrow, P.C., Akiskal, H.S., McKinney, W.T. (1984). Mood Disorders: Historical Perspective and Current Models of Explanation. In: Mood Disorders. Critical Issues in Psychiatry. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-2729-5_2
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