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Subsection 2. the Definition, Number and Classification of Diseases.

Subsection 2. The definition, number and classification of diseases.

Almost every physician offers a definition of disease. Fernel calls it a condition of the body contrary to nature. Fuchs and Crato call it an obstruction, impairment or alteration of any function of the body or one of its parts. Tholosanus calls it a dissolution and disturbance of the bond between body and soul, just as health perfects and helps preserve that bond. Labeo, quoted in Aulus Gellius, calls it an unhealthy condition of the body, contrary to nature and hindering its use. Others put it differently, but all mean much the same.

How many diseases there are remains an unsettled question. Pliny counts 300, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot; elsewhere he speaks of “an infinite multitude of diseases.” Whatever the case in those days, it makes no difference: in our own, I am sure, their number has greatly increased.

Wasting sickness and a new troop of fevers Have descended upon the earth.

For besides many epidemic diseases unheard of and entirely unknown to Galen and Hippocrates—scurvy, smallpox, plica, sweating sickness, the French disease and so on—we have many peculiar to almost every part of the body. None of us is so sound, or has so good a constitution, as to have no impairment of body or mind. “Each of us suffers his own lot”: we all have our infirmities, sooner or later, in greater or lesser measure.

Perhaps once in an age, or one in a thousand, someone like Zenophilus the musician in Pliny may happen to live for 105 years without any infirmity; or a Pollio Romulus may preserve himself with wine and oil; or someone may be as fortunate as Quintus Metellus, whom Valerius praises so extravagantly. Or he may be as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Germany, whom the astrologer Leovitius offers as proof of his art’s certainty: because the significators in his birth chart were fortunate and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, this man of a very cold constitution could not remember ever having been ill.

Paracelsus may boast that he could make a man live for 400 years or more, if he could rear him from infancy and regulate his diet as he pleased. Some physicians hold that human life has no fixed limit, but may continually be prolonged by moderation and medicine. Meanwhile, ordinary experience shows us that no one can escape, and that Hesiod’s words are true:

For the earth is full of evils, and the sea is full; Diseases visit humankind by day and by night, Coming of their own accord.

The earth is full of maladies, and so the sea, Which fall upon us both by night and day.

If you want a more precise classification of the ordinary diseases to which people are subject, I refer you to physicians. They will tell you of acute and chronic diseases; primary and secondary; fatal and nonfatal; wandering and fixed; simple, compound, associated or consequent; affecting a part or the whole; established as a habit or present as a disposition, and so on. For now, the division best suited to my purpose is into diseases of the body and diseases of the mind.

For diseases of the body, briefly catalogued by Fuchs in his Institutes, book 3, section 1, chapter 11, I refer you to the massive volumes of Galen, Aretaeus, Rhazes, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus, Aetius and Gardonerius; and to those meticulous modern writers Savonarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus, Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso and others, who have treated them all systematically and at length. I shall deal briefly and separately with diseases of the mind and head.

1452.“Contrary to nature” means contrary to the body’s normal constitution or functioning. “Affection” means a condition, and “habit” a state or disposition, not a repeated custom. The Labeo definition is reported through Caelius Sabinus in Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 4.2.3; the full Latin ends qui usum eius facit deteriorem, “which makes its use worse.”

1456.Horace, Odes 1.3.30–31. The lines follow the theft of fire from heaven by Prometheus; Burton applies them to the multiplication of diseases. Both the Latin here and the later Greek are newly translated; Burton’s own following English couplet is also retained in modernized form.

1458.Scorbutum is scurvy; plica denotes a condition involving severely matted hair; Morbus Gallicus, “the French disease,” usually denotes syphilis in this period. Burton’s claim that these diseases were unknown to Galen and Hippocrates is his historical judgement, not a statement that their first occurrence has been established.

1459.Virgil, Aeneid 6.743, in Anchises’s explanation of the purification of souls after death. Burton’s following gloss applies the line to everyone’s individual infirmities; “his own lot” follows that use without substituting a modern psychiatric sense of “demons.”

1464.Pliny’s Natural History 7.50 in Holland’s 1601 chapter scheme reports Xenophilus’s 105 years without infirmity; Burton prints Zenophilus. At 22.53, section 114, Pliny names Pollio Romilius, over a hundred, and gives his answer to Augustus: intus mulso, foris oleo, honeyed wine within, oil without. Burton’s Romulus and foras remain. These locate literary reports, not independent verification of longevity or medical benefit.

1465.“Geniture” is a nativity or birth chart; “significators” are the celestial factors taken to signify a person or condition. “Cold” describes the man’s bodily temperament within historical medicine. The causal link asserted here is astrological. Ausborrow is Augsburg.

1468.Hesiod, Works and Days 101–103, cut off after “come of their own accord.” Greek ligatures and accents are regularized. The 1651 text has ἠδ’, “and,” where the consulted Greek edition has αἳ δ’, “and others.” Burton’s English couplet compresses the three quoted lines. The cramped setting of ἀνθρώποισιν merits further collation.

1471.“Habit” is an established condition; “disposition” a less settled state. Burton develops this distinction in the next subsection. “Errant” diseases wander or shift their location; “fixed” remain in one place. Salutares here contrasts with lethal diseases and is rendered “nonfatal.” These are historical classifications.

1472.“Neotericks” means more recent or modern writers, relative to Burton. These names range across ancient, medieval and Renaissance medicine. Familiar forms of names are used selectively in the modern column; the original forms remain available on the left. A missing separator between Paulus and Aetius is supplied in modern English.