The torture and extremity of his misery torment him so greatly that he can take no pleasure in life, but is, in a manner, compelled to do himself violence to escape his present unbearable pains. Thus some, says Fracastorius, “in frenzy, but most in despair, sorrow and fear, and from the anguish and distress of their souls, do themselves violence, for their life is unhappy and miserable. They can find no rest at night and cannot sleep; or if they do slumber, frightening dreams terrify them.”

By day some terrible object constantly frightens them, and suspicion, fear, sorrow, discontent, cares, shame and anguish tear them apart like so many wild horses. They cannot be at peace for an hour or a minute. Even against their will they dwell on it, thinking of it continually; they cannot forget it. It grinds their souls day and night. Perpetually tormented, a burden to themselves as Job was, they can neither eat, drink nor sleep. Psalm 107:18: “Their soul loathes all food, and they are brought to death’s door,” “bound in misery and iron.” With Job they curse their stars and the day of their birth and wish for death. For, as Pineda and most interpreters maintain, Job’s melancholy reached despair and almost madness itself.

In the bitterness of their passion they often murmur against the world, friends, relations and all humankind, even against God himself: “They do not wish to live; they do not know how to die”—live they will not, die they cannot. Amid these squalid, ugly and wearisome days, finding no comfort or remedy in this wretched life, they finally seek relief from everything in death. “All things seek the good”: all creatures seek the best, and what they hope will be for their good, “under the appearance”—in appearance at least—“either because they think it noble to die,” says Hippocrates, “or because they think they will thereby be freed from greater evils”: freed as they wish.

Though, like Aesop’s fish, they often leap from the frying pan into the fire itself, they hope for relief by this means. Therefore, says Felix Plater, “after many wearisome days, at last, by drowning, hanging or some such fearful end,” they throw themselves down or otherwise kill themselves. “Many lamentable examples are seen among us every day.” “One hangs himself with a noose before the doors,” as Seneca observes; “another threw himself from a roof rather than hear his angry master; another, rather than be brought back from flight, drove a blade into his entrails.” So many causes there are: “Love brings death to these, frenzy to those”—love, grief, anger, madness, shame and so on.

It is a common calamity, a fatal outcome of this disease: a jury of physicians condemns them to a violent death. Frenzied in disposition, swept headlong by their tyrannical wills and driven by misery, such people have nothing left but to be their own butchers and execute themselves, unless the heavenly Physician intervenes by his assisting grace and mercy alone, for no human persuasion or art can help. Socrates’ hemlock, Lucretia’s dagger and Timon’s halter are still available; Cato’s knife and Nero’s sword remain behind them, so many fatal instruments bequeathed to posterity, to be used until the world’s end by such distressed souls.

So intolerable, unbearable, grievous and violent is their pain, so unspeakable and unceasing. One day of grief is a hundred years, as Cardan observes. It is “a torture chamber for human beings, anguish of mind,” as Aretaeus aptly says: a plague of the soul, the soul’s cramp and convulsion, a hell in miniature. If there is a hell on earth, it is to be found in a melancholy person’s heart.

For that deep torment may be called a hell When one feels more than words have power to tell.

Indeed, what mocking Lucian said of gout in jest, I may truthfully say of melancholy in earnest.

O sorrowful name, O hateful to the gods, Weeping Melancholy, daughter of Cocytus, You Fury born in Tartarus’ dark caverns, Whom Megaera bore within her womb And suckled at her breasts, and into whose infant mouth Alecto poured bitter milk: All the demons brought you, loathsome thing, Into the light, to the destruction of mortals.

And a little later.

Jupiter strikes with no such thunderbolt; No storm at sea rages so fiercely; No rushing whirlwind has such force. Am I enduring Cerberus’ savage bites? Is Echidna’s venom consuming my limbs? Or a tunic steeped in Nessus’ tainted blood? This evil is beyond tears and beyond cure.

O sad and hateful name, a name so fierce: Melancholy, hell’s own brat. Born there, it dwells in hellish darkness; The Furies raised it at Megaera’s breast; Alecto gave it bitter milk to drink. All conspired to be a bane to mortal men, Bringing this devil from that black den. Neither Jupiter’s thunderbolt, nor storm at sea, Nor whirlwind so dismays our hearts. What—am I bitten by fierce Cerberus, Or stung by a serpent so poisonous? Have I put on a shirt dipped in Nessus’ blood? My pain is past cure; medicine can do no good.

No bodily torture equals it: “The Sicilian tyrants invented no greater torment.” No strappados, hot irons or bulls of Phalaris.

Neither the gods’ anger, nor weapons, nor the enemy Harms so much as you alone, stealing into minds.

Neither Jove’s wrath nor devils can Do so much harm to the human soul.

All fears, griefs, suspicions, discontents, evils and unpleasantnesses are swallowed up and drowned in this Euripus, this Irish Sea, this ocean of misery, like so many small streams. It is “the concentrated mass of every hardship,” as Ammianus described his distressed Palladius. I say of our melancholy man that he is the cream of human adversity, its quintessence and final sum. All other diseases, whatever they may be, are mere flea bites beside melancholy in its extent. It is the essence of them all.

It is calamity’s lodging; what need is there for words? Whatever evil you seek, there you will find it.

What need for more words? It is calamity’s inn; Whatever mischief you seek is within.