The Anatomy of Melancholy

With these so disturbed, digestion is hindered and the principal organs greatly weakened, as Dr Navarra explained well when Montanus consulted him about a Jewish man suffering from melancholy. With the spirits so disordered, nourishment must necessarily diminish, bad humours increase, and undigested matter and thick spirits be generated together with melancholy blood. The other parts, deprived of their spirits by violent passion, cannot perform their functions: sensation and movement fail. Thus we look at something without seeing it, or hear without noticing, although it would otherwise affect us deeply if we were free from that passion.

I may therefore conclude with Arnoldus: “The power of imagination is very great, and almost the whole cause of melancholy should be ascribed to this alone, rather than to an imbalance of the body.” Great is the force of imagination, and the cause of melancholy should be attributed far more to this alone than to bodily disorder.

Since imagination has so great a part in producing this illness and is so powerful in itself, it will suit my discourse to make a brief digression on its force and the way it causes this alteration. Although some dislike this kind of digression as frivolous and irrelevant, I share Beroaldus’s opinion: such digressions greatly delight and refresh a weary reader; they are like sauce to a poor appetite, and I therefore use them most willingly.