The Anatomy of Melancholy

Marcellus Donatus, book 2, chapter 41, mentions from Seneca a rich man named Seneccio who thought himself and everything he possessed great: a great wife, great horses. He could not bear little things, but wanted great drinking vessels, great hose and great shoes larger than his feet. Like the woman in Trallianus who supposed she could shake the whole world with her finger and feared to clench her fist lest she crush the world to pieces like an apple.

Or the man in Galen who thought himself Atlas, supporting heaven on his shoulders. Another thinks himself so small that he can creep into a mousehole; one fears heaven will fall on his head; a second is a cock—and Guianerius says he saw such a man at Padua, who would clap his hands together and crow. Another thinks he is a nightingale and therefore sings all night long; another that he is entirely glass, a pitcher, and so lets no one come near him. Laurentius vouches for such a man whom he knew in France.

Christophorus à Vega, chapter 3, book 14, Skenkius and Marcellus Donatus, book 2, chapter 1, give many such examples, including a baker at Ferrara who thought he was made of butter and dared not sit in the sun or come near a fire for fear of melting; and another who thought he was a leather case filled with air. Some laugh or weep; some are mad, others dejected, stupefied or in great agony; some in fits, others continuously, and so forth.

Some have disordered hearing: they think they hear music or some hideous noise, as their imagination conceives it; others have disordered sight, others smell—one sense in some people, another in others. Louis XI imagined that everything around him stank. All the fragrant perfumes they could obtain failed to relieve him; he still smelled a foul stench.

A melancholic French poet in Laurentius, ill with a fever and troubled by sleeplessness, was directed by his physicians to anoint his temples with poplar ointment. But he so disliked its smell that for many years afterwards he imagined everyone who came near him smelled of it. He would let no one speak with him except from a distance, or wear any new clothes, because he kept thinking they smelled of it. Wise and judicious in all other matters, he would speak sensibly except on this one subject.

A gentleman in Limousin, says Anthony Verdeur, was convinced that he had only one leg after being frightened by a wild boar that happened to strike him on the leg. Though well in all other respects, he could not be persuaded that his leg was sound until two Franciscans happened to pass that way and completely freed him from the idea. “But we have heard more than enough stories.”