The Anatomy of Melancholy

So this subject belongs to both professions, and I hope it is not unsuitable for me: a clergyman by profession, a physician by inclination. Jupiter was in the sixth house of my horoscope. I say with Beroaldus, “I am not a physician, nor wholly ignorant of medicine.” I have taken some trouble over medical theory, with no intention of practising, but to satisfy myself. That too was one reason I first undertook this subject.

If these reasons do not satisfy you, good reader, consider Alexander the Munificent, that generous prelate, formerly bishop of Lincoln. After building six castles, he built as many religious houses, “to wash away the odium of his work,” as Mr Camden says—to remove the resentment his buildings caused and avert any scandal or accusation arising from them. William of Newburgh uses those very words of Roger, the wealthy bishop of Salisbury, who built Sherborne Castle and the castle at Devizes in King Stephen’s time. So if my discourse is too medical, or savours too much of secular learning, I promise to make amends hereafter with a theological treatise.

But I hope this will suffice once you have considered more fully the matter of my subject, “the underlying thing”—melancholy, madness—and the reasons that follow, which chiefly moved me: the disease’s prevalence, the need for a cure, and the benefit or common good that knowledge of it will bring to everyone, as the following preface will show at length.

And I do not doubt that in the end you will agree with me: to dissect this humour properly throughout every part of our human microcosm is as great a task as reconciling the chronological errors in the history of the Assyrian monarchy, finding how to square the circle, or exploring the inlets and channels of the Northeast or Northwest Passage. It is every bit as fine a discovery as that hungry Spaniard’s “Unknown Southern Land,” and as troublesome as perfecting the calculation of the motions of Mars and Mercury—which so torments our astronomers—or correcting the Gregorian calendar.

That is how I feel, for my part. Like Theophrastus with his Characters, I hope “that our descendants, my friend Polycles, will be the better for what we have written: that they will correct and put right their faults by our examples, and apply our precepts and warnings to their own use.” And just as the great commander Žižka wished a drum to be made from his skin after his death, thinking its very sound would put his enemies to flight, so I do not doubt that these following lines, when recited or read hereafter, will drive away melancholy—even after I am gone—as powerfully as Žižka’s drum could terrify his foes.

Yet let me give one passing warning to my present or future reader who is actually suffering from melancholy: do not read the descriptions of symptoms or prognoses in the treatise that follows. By applying what you read to yourself, magnifying it, and taking general statements as descriptions of your own case—as melancholy people mostly do—you may distress or harm yourself, and end up doing yourself more harm than good.