The Anatomy of Melancholy

They cannot escape this deadly affliction, whatever company they enter. “The fatal arrow clings to the side,” as with a deer that has been struck: whether it runs, walks or rests, with the herd or alone, this grief remains. Indecision, inconstancy, emptiness of mind, their fear, torment, anxiety, jealousy, suspicion and the rest continue, and they find no relief. So the man complained in the poet:

“I return home sorrowful, my mind almost Distracted, bewildered by distress. I sit down: servants hurry up and take my slippers off; I see others hastening to spread the couches And prepare the meal; each did his utmost To soften that misery for me.”

He came home sorrowful and troubled in mind. His servants did everything they could to please him: one pulled off his socks, another prepared his bed, a third his supper. All did their utmost to ease his grief and cheer him. He was profoundly melancholy; he had lost his son: “that tormented him.” That was his heartache, his pain, his agony, which could not be removed.

This often makes them weary of their lives, and deadly thoughts of doing violence to themselves enter their minds. “Weariness of life” is a common symptom. “Slowly and joylessly the hours pass.” They soon tire of everything: now they will stay, now leave; now, in bed, they will get up; now up, they will go to bed; now pleased, then displeased again; now they like everything, soon dislike it all, weary of all. “There follows now a desire to live, now a desire to die,” says Aurelianus, book 1, chapter 6.

But for the most part “they condemn life,” discontented, disturbed and distressed by every slight occasion or object, or by none at all: often tempted, I say, to do away with themselves. “They do not wish to live; they do not know how to die”: they cannot die, they will not live. They complain, weep and lament, and think they lead a most miserable life. No one was ever so badly off or in such a state before; every poor person they see is most fortunate compared with them; every beggar who comes to the door is happier than they are.

They would willingly exchange lives with them, especially if they are alone, idle and separated from their usual companions, troubled, displeased or provoked: grief, fear, agony, discontent, weariness, sluggishness, suspicion or some such passion takes forceful hold of them. Yet soon afterwards, when they return to company they like or are pleased, “they condemn their judgement in turn, and delight in the comfort of life,” as Octavius Horatianus observes, book 2, chapter 5: they condemn their former dissatisfaction and are quite content to live.

And so they continue until some fresh discontent troubles them again, and then they are weary of their lives, weary of everything; they wish to die and show a necessity to live rather than a desire. The emperor Claudius, as Suetonius describes him, had a touch of this disease: when tormented by stomach pain, he thought of taking his own life.

Julius Caesar Claudinus, consultation 84, had a Polish patient so affected that, through the fear and sorrow that continually disturbed him, he hated his own life and wished every moment for death and release from his misery. Mercurialis had another, and another who often thought of killing himself; this continued for many years.