The Anatomy of Melancholy

No living creature, they believe, has ever suffered such torment, such a miserable condition, such distress of mind: no hope, no faith, beyond cure, rejected by God, continually tempted to kill themselves. Something talks with them; they spit fire and sulphur; they cannot help blaspheming, cannot repent or believe or think a good thought,

carried so far, says Felix Platter, that they are driven to think impious thoughts even against their will, to blaspheme against God, to commit many dreadful acts and to lay violent hands upon themselves, and so on. In their disturbed fits and despairing states they may attack others, sometimes close and dear friends, sometimes complete strangers, on the slightest provocation or none. For someone who does not care about his own life has power over another person’s.

They think evil against their will: what they themselves abhor, they feel compelled to think, do and say. Platter gives the example of a patient who, whenever he tried to pray, continually had such evil thoughts and wicked meditations suggested to him. He gives another example of a woman often tempted to curse God, blaspheme and kill herself.

Sometimes the devil, as they say, stands outside and talks with them; sometimes they think he is inside them, speaking there as he does to those who are possessed. Thus Apollodorus, in Plutarch, thought his heart spoke within him.

There is a most memorable example in Francis Spira, a lawyer of Padua, in 1545. In his despair, no counsel from learned men could comfort him. He felt, as he said, the pains of hell in his soul; on every other subject he reasoned correctly, but on this he was utterly deranged. Frismelica, Bellovat and other excellent physicians could make him neither eat nor drink nor sleep; no persuasion could relieve him. No man ever pleaded his own case as well as this man pleaded against himself, and so he died in despair. Springer, a lawyer, wrote his life.

Cardinal Crescence likewise died in despair at Verona. He constantly thought a black dog followed him to his deathbed; no one could drive it away. Sleidan, Commentaries, 23, chapter, book 3.

While I was writing this treatise, says Montalto in chapter 2 On Melancholy, a nun came to me for help. Well in every other respect, but troubled in conscience for the past five years, she is almost mad and unable to resist; she thinks she has offended God and is certainly damned.

Felix Platter has many examples of people who thought themselves damned, forsaken by God, and so on. One dared neither go to church nor approach the Rhine for fear of killing himself, because those were the occasions when he was most strongly tempted. These and similar symptoms intensify or lessen as the illness itself grows stronger or weaker. Some will listen to good counsel, others will not; some want help, while others reject it all and will not be comforted.