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← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

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Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical…

The part affected in the mean, time as Arnoldus supposeth, is the former part of the head for want of moisture, which his Commentator rejects.

Langius med. epist. lib. 1. cap. 24. will have this passion sited in the liver, and to keep residence in the heart, to proceed first from the eyes so carried by our spirits, and kindled with imagination in the liver and heart; cogit amare jecur, as the saying is. Medium ferit per epar, as Cupid in Anacreon.

For some such cause belike Homer fains Titius liver (who was enamored on Latona) to be still gnawed by two Vultures day and night in hell, for that young mens bowels thus enamored, are so continually tormented by love.

Gordonius cap. 2. part. 2. will have the testicles an immediate subject or cause, the liver an Antecedent.

Fracastorius agrees in this with Gordonius, inde primitus imaginatio venerea, erectio, &c. titillatissimam partem vocat, ita ut nisi extruso semine gestiens voluptas non cessat, nec assidua veneris recordatio, addit Gnastivinus Comment. 4. Sect. prob. 27. Arist.

But properly it is a passion of the brain, as all other melancholy, by reason of corrupt imagination, and so doth Jason Pratensis c. 19. de morb. cerebri, (who writes copiously of this Eroticall love) place and reckon it amongst the affections of the brain.

Melancton de animâ confutes those that make the liver a part affected, and Guianerius Tract. 15. cap. 13. & 17. though many put all the affections in the heart, refers it to the brain. Ficinus cap. 7. in Convivium Platonis, will have the blood to be the part affected. Io. Frietagius cap. 14. noct. med. supposeth all four affected, heart, liver, brain, blood; but the major part concur upon the brain,

’tis imaginatio læsa; and both imagination and reason are misaffected; because of his corrupt judgement, and continuall meditation of that which he desires, he may truly be said to be melancholy.

If it be violent, or his disease inveterate, as I have determined in the precedent partitions, both imagination and reason are misaffected, first one, and then the other.

ideoq; recte melancholicus appellatur. Concupiscentia vehemens ex corrupto judicio æstimativæ virtutis.

8796.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], u: “Ob calefactionem spirituum pars anterior capitis laborat ob consumptionem humiditatis.” “Through the heating of the spirits, the front of the head suffers because its moisture is consumed.”

8798.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], x: “Affectus animi concupiscibilis è desiderio rei amatæ per oculos in mente concepto, spiritus in corde & jecore incendens.” “A passion of the appetitive faculty, arising from desire for the loved object, conceived in the mind through the eyes, inflaming the spirits in the heart and liver.”

8800.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], y: “Odyss. & Metamor. 4. Ovid.” Homer, Odyssey; and Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.

8801.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], z: “Quod talem carnificinam in adolescentum visceribus amor faciat inexplebilis.” “Because insatiable love inflicts such butchery on the inward parts of young people.”

8803.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], a: “Testiculi quoad causam conjunctam, epar antecedentem, possunt esse subjectum.” “The testicles may be the seat in respect of the immediate cause, the liver in respect of the antecedent cause.”

8805.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], b: “Propriè passio cerebri est ob corruptam imaginationem.” “Properly it is a disorder of the brain arising from an impaired imagination.”

8807.BurtonPrinted page 446 [misprinted 246], c: “Cap. de affectibus.” Chapter on the passions, in Melanchthon’s On the Soul.

8809.BurtonPrinted page 447, e: “Est corruptio imaginativæ & æstimativæ facultatis, ob formam fortiter affixam, corruptumq; judicium, ut semper de eo cogitet.” “It is an impairment of the imaginative and estimative faculties, owing to an image firmly fixed in the mind and a faulty judgement, so that he thinks of it continually.”