The Anatomy of Melancholy

Section 3. Member 1. Subsection 1. Symptoms or signs of melancholy in the body.

Parrhasius, a painter of Athens, bought a very old man from among the Olynthian captives whom Philip of Macedon brought home to sell. Once he had him in Athens, he subjected him to extreme torture and torment, so that his example would help him portray the pain and suffering of the Prometheus he was about to paint.

For my purpose I need not be so barbarous, inhuman, painstaking or cruel as to torture any poor melancholic person. Their symptoms are plain, obvious and familiar; no such minute observation or far-fetched subject is needed. They draw their own portraits; they reveal themselves of their own accord. They are all too common everywhere; I meet them constantly as I go. They cannot hide their condition; their sufferings are too well known. I need not look far to describe them.

Symptoms, then, are either universal or peculiar to individuals or kinds of the disease, says Gordonius in part 2, chapter 19 of his medical work. Some signs are hidden, some apparent; some belong to the body, some to the mind. They vary in different ways according to the internal or external causes, says Capivaccius; or arise from the stars and celestial influences, according to Jovianus Pontanus, On Celestial Things, book 10, chapter 13; or from the various mixtures of the humours, says Ficino, book 1, chapter 4 of his work on preserving health.

As they are hot or cold, natural or unnatural, intensified or lessened, so Aëtius holds that “melancholic derangements take many forms”: a diversity of melancholic signs. Laurentius attributes them to people’s different temperaments, pleasures, natures and inclinations, to the length of time the condition has lasted, and to whether it occurs alone or is mixed with other diseases. As the causes differ, so must the signs, almost without number: Altomarus, chapter 7 of his Art of Medicine.

And just as wine produces different effects, or that herb Tortocolla in Laurentius, which makes some laugh, some weep, some sleep, some dance, some sing, some howl, some drink, and so on, so this melancholic humour of ours produces different signs in different people.

But to bring them within bounds, these general symptoms may be grouped as those of the body or of the mind. The usual signs appearing in the bodies of melancholic people are these: they are cold and dry, or hot and dry, according to how far the humour has been scorched. From these primary qualities arise many secondary ones, such as colour: black, dark, pale, ruddy, and so on. Some are “intensely red,” as Montaltus observes in chapter 16, citing Galen’s On the Affected Parts, book 3—very red and highly coloured.

Hippocrates, in his book On Madness and Melancholy, lists these signs: they are lean, withered, hollow-eyed, old-looking, wrinkled and rough; much troubled with wind and abdominal cramps or bellyache; frequently belching; with dry, hard bowels, dejected looks and shaggy beards; ringing in the ears, vertigo and light-headedness; little or no sleep, and that interrupted; terrible and frightening dreams. “Anna, my sister, what dreams terrify me in my anxious state?”