The Anatomy of Melancholy

We commonly see toothache, gout, epilepsy, the bite of a mad dog and many such ailments cured by spells, words, written symbols and charms; and many fresh wounds healed magnetically by that “weapon salve” now so widely used, which Crollius and Goclenius have recently defended in print, Libavius just as firmly opposes in a full treatise, and most people dispute.

Everyone knows that such charms or cures have no power beyond strong imagination and belief alone, which, as Pomponazzi maintains, set the humours, spirits and blood in motion and remove the cause of illness from the affected parts. We may say the same of magical effects, superstitious cures and those performed by quacks and wizards. Just as many people are harmed by wicked disbelief, says Weyer of charms, spells and the like, so we find from experience that many are relieved by the same means.

An empiric or a simple surgeon often performs more extraordinary cures than a learned physician. Nymannus gives the reason: the patient places his confidence in him, and Avicenna ranks that confidence above medical skill, rules and every remedy whatsoever. Belief alone, says Cardan, makes or ruins physicians; and according to Hippocrates, the one most trusted performs the best cures.

So variously does this imagination of ours affect, twist and turn, so imperiously command our bodies: like another Proteus or a chameleon, it can take every shape. Its power is so great, Ficino adds, that it can work upon others as well as ourselves. How else can sore eyes in one person cause the same complaint in another? Why does one person’s yawning make another yawn? Why does one man’s pissing often prompt a second to do the same? Why is a third disturbed by the scraping of wooden plates or the rasping of files?

Why does a corpse bleed when the murderer is brought before it, some weeks after the murder? Why do witches and old women cast the evil eye on children and bewitch them? It is because, as Weyer, Paracelsus, Cardan, Mizaldus, Valleriola, Cesare Vanini, Campanella and many philosophers think, one person’s forceful imagination moves and alters another’s spirits.

More than this: by such means they can not only cause and cure diseases, illnesses and various infirmities in people far away, as Avicenna supposes in On the Soul, book 4, section 4, but also move bodies from their places and cause thunder, lightning and storms, an opinion approved by al-Kindi, Paracelsus and some others. Thus I may confidently conclude that this strong conception or imagination is “the human being’s star,” and the rudder of this ship of ours. Reason should steer it, but, overpowered by imagination, cannot control it, and so allows itself and our whole vessel to be overruled and often overturned.