The Anatomy of Melancholy

Stephanus, a Frenchman, agrees in On the Country Estate, book 1, chapter 4. He particularly recommends a south-facing or south-east-facing hillside, with trees to the north, provided it is well supplied with water: a requirement that must never be neglected in choosing any site, as Herbastein repeatedly insists in book 1.

The physician Julius Caesar Claudinus, in consultation 24 for a Polish nobleman inclined to melancholy, advises him to live in an east-facing house and take every care that the air is clear and sweet. Montanus gives the same counsel to his patient the Earl of Montfort in consultation 229: to inhabit a pleasant house with good air. If the natural situation of our city, town, or village cannot be changed, it can still be improved by human ingenuity.

In hot countries, therefore, they make city streets very narrow, throughout Spain, Africa, Italy, and Greece, and in many French cities, especially in the southern regions of Languedoc and Provence. Montpellier, the home and university of physicians, is built this way, with tall houses and narrow streets to keep off the sun’s scalding rays. Tacitus, in book 15 of the Annals, recommends this as best for their health, because tall buildings and narrow streets keep out the sunbeams.

Some cities have galleries or covered arcades along the street, as at Damascus, Bologna, Padua, Bern in Switzerland, and Chester in our own country, to shelter people both from storms and from the sun’s scorching heat. In hot countries they build on high hills for more air, or beside the sea, as at Baiae and Naples. In our northern regions we do the opposite: we favour straight, broad, open, handsome streets, as best suited to our climate.

We build in low-lying places for warmth. And the situation of Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the Aegean Sea, which Vitruvius so strongly condemns—magnificently built with fine houses, “but unwisely placed,” ill-sited because it faced south and its people all fell sick when the south wind blew—would be excellent in our northern climates.

I have said enough about the planned situation of houses. If the site of the dwelling cannot be changed, much still depends on choosing a suitable chamber or room, opening and closing windows at the right time, keeping out outside air and winds, and walking outdoors at suitable hours. Crato, a German, recommends an eastern or southern exposure, free from putrefaction, fens, bogs, and dungheaps. In this case he disapproves of cold air, north winds, rainy weather, and misty days. If the air is of that kind, open no windows and do not go outside.

Montanus will not allow his patient to go out at all when the wind is strong or tempestuous, as it usually is with us in March; nor on cloudy, lowering, dark days, as in November, which we commonly call the black month; nor in stormy weather, whatever the direction of the wind. In consultations 27 and 30, the patient must not open a casement in bad weather or a stormy season; in consultation 299, Montanus particularly forbids opening windows to a south wind.