The Anatomy of Melancholy

Their urine is mostly pale and faintly coloured: “urine scanty, acrid and bilious” (Aretaeus)—not much in quantity. But in my judgement this is quite as uncertain as the other sign, varying so often with different individuals, bodily constitutions and other circumstances that it deserves no attention in chronic diseases.

Their melancholic waste matter is plentiful in some, scanty in others, according to how the spleen performs its part. From this come wind, palpitations of the heart, shortness of breath, abundant moisture in the stomach, heaviness and pain at the heart, and intolerable numbness and dullness of spirits. Their excrement or stool is hard, in some cases black and scanty.

If the heart, brain, liver and spleen are disordered, as they usually are, many troubles arise from them and many diseases accompany them: the nightmare, apoplexy, epilepsy, vertigo, those frequent spells of wakefulness and terrible dreams; untimely laughing, weeping, sighing, sobbing, shyness, blushing, trembling, sweating, fainting, and so on. All their senses are disturbed: they think they see, hear, smell and touch things they do not, as will be shown in the following discussion.