The Anatomy of Melancholy

All this variety is produced by the different degrees of heat and cold. Hercules de Saxonia holds that it proceeds entirely from the disordered balance of the spirits alone—especially the animal spirits, which are immaterial—the nearest and immediate causes of melancholy, according to whether they are hot, cold, dry or moist. Their agitation produces the diversity of symptoms that he enumerates in chapter 13 of his Treatise on Melancholy, discussing it at length in every part.

Others hold that they arise from the differing degrees to which the four humours are scorched. In this unnatural melancholy, corrupted blood, scorched choler or natural melancholy—transformed by excessive heat and scorching into something like a caustic lye compared with its natural state—produce, according to the diversity of their substance, various strange symptoms. Timothy Bright enumerates these in his following chapter; so does Arculanus, according to the four principal scorched humours, as do many others.

For example, if it proceeds from phlegm—which is rare and less frequent than the other kinds—it produces sluggish symptoms and a kind of stupor, or impairment without strong emotion. They are sleepy, says Savonarola, dull, slow, cold, dull-witted and ass-like. “Asinine melancholy,” Melanchthon calls it. They are much given to weeping and delight in waters, ponds, pools, rivers, fishing, fowling and the like (Arnoldus, Breviary, book 1, chapter 18). They are pale, slothful, inclined to sleep and heavy; much troubled by headache, continual brooding and muttering to themselves.

They dream of water and of being in danger of drowning, and fear such things, says Rhazes. They are fatter than other melancholic people, have muddy complexions, are more inclined to spit and sleep, are more troubled by rheum than the rest, and always keep their eyes fixed on the ground. Hercules de Saxonia had such a patient, a widow in Venice, who was fat and continually very sleepy; Christophorus à Vega had another affected in the same way.

If it is long-established or violent, the symptoms are more apparent. They are plainly deranged and seem ridiculous to others in all their gestures, actions and speech, imagining impossibilities, like the man in Christophorus à Vega who thought he was a cask of wine, and that man of Siena who resolved not to piss for fear of drowning the whole town.

If it proceeds from scorched blood, or if blood is mixed into it, such people commonly have ruddy complexions and high colour, according to Salust Salvianus and Hercules de Saxonia. And, as Savonarola and Victorius Faventinus in his Empirics add, the veins of their eyes are red, as well as their faces. They are much inclined to laughter, witty and merry, imaginative in conversation, agreeable if the condition is not far advanced, and much given to music, dancing and women’s company.