The Anatomy of Melancholy

Subsection 4 Symptoms of melancholy in unmarried women, nuns and widows

Because Lodovicus Mercatus, in his second book On the Disorders of Women, chapter 4, and Rodericus à Castro, On the Diseases of Women, book 2, chapter 3—two famous physicians in Spain—and Daniel Sennertus of Wittenberg, book 1, part 2, chapter 13, with others, have thought fit in their recently published works to write two full treatises “on the melancholy of virgins, nuns and widows,” treating it as a particular type of melancholy, already specified by me, distinct from the rest—for it differs greatly from that which commonly affects men and other women, having a single cause peculiar to women alone—I must not omit, in this general survey of melancholic symptoms, the particular signs in people so affected.

The causes of this dreadful malady in older unmarried women, widows and barren women are drawn from Hippocrates, Cleopatra, Moschion and those ancient writers on women’s diseases. “Because the diaphragm is impaired,” says Mercatus: because the midriff or diaphragm, heart and brain are affected by harmful vapours arising from menstrual blood. “An inflammation of the artery near the back,” Rodericus adds—an inflammation of the back, which, with the other parts, is affected by that sooty exhalation of corrupted seed, disturbing the brain, heart and mind.

The brain, I say, is affected through sympathy with another part, rather than through a disorder originating in itself: “For the whole cause of this affection depends upon the womb and the harmful condition of the menstrual blood.” In a word, the entire malady proceeds from that inflammation, putrefaction, black smoky vapours and the like. From these come care, sorrow, anxiety, a darkening of the spirits, agony, despair and similar troubles, which are intensified or diminished “if the ardour of love comes upon them,” or through any other powerful object of thought or disturbance of mind.

This melancholy may befall widows, with much care and sorrow, as it frequently does, because of a sudden change in their accustomed way of life, and so on. It may befall women lying in after childbirth “because the bodily discharge has been suppressed.” But for the causes already given, it is more common among nuns, older unmarried women and some barren women: “It happens to these more often than to the rest,” says Rodericus. The others are not altogether excluded.

From these causes Rodericus, following Aretaeus, defines it as “anguish of mind,” a vexation of the mind, a sudden sorrow arising from a small, slight or no occasion, with a kind of quiet mental derangement and pain in one part or another—the head, heart, breasts, sides, back or belly—and much solitude, weeping, distraction and the like. They are sometimes suddenly relieved of it, because it comes and goes in fits and is less continuous than other melancholy.