The Anatomy of Melancholy

SUBSECTION 3. Concerning medicine.

Finally, medicine itself must be considered; “for the Lord has created medicines from the earth, and a wise person will not reject them,” Ecclesiasticus 38:4. Verse 8: “From such things the apothecary makes a compound,” and so on.

These medicines come in countless different kinds—plants, metals, animals and so on—and have different properties. Some benefit one person and harm another; some, harmful in themselves, become very wholesome and beneficial when properly prepared. There are simple remedies, compounds and so forth. They are therefore left to the management of prudent and skilful physicians, who apply them to human use. For this purpose physicians have devised methods and various professional rules, to arrange these remedies according to their particular uses.

Medicine, as Hippocrates defines it, is nothing but addition and subtraction. Necessary in every other disease, it must be practised with the greatest precision in melancholy, which, as Mercurialis acknowledges, is so common an illness in our times that its treatment particularly deserves to be understood.

I find different prescriptions and methods in different writers. Some undertake to cure every illness with one medicine, applied in different ways: for example, that panacea, “drinkable gold,” so much disputed nowadays, the “herb of the sun,” and so on.

Paracelsus reduces all diseases to four principal classes, and Severinus, Ravelascus, Leo Suavius and others follow and imitate him. These classes are leprosy, gout, dropsy and epilepsy. They place the remaining diseases under these headings: under leprosy, ulcers, itching disorders, scaly eruptions, scabs and so on; under gout, the stone, colic, toothache, headache and so on; under dropsy, fevers, jaundice, bodily wasting and so on; under epilepsy, paralysis, vertigo, cramps, convulsions, nightmare, apoplexy and so on.

“If any of these four principal diseases is cured,” says Ravelascus, “all the subordinate diseases are cured, and the same remedies generally serve.” But this is too sweeping, and some dispute it. For the particular disease of melancholy, which I am now going to discuss, I find different treatments, methods and prescriptions.

Those who undertake the practical treatment of melancholy, says Duretus in his notes on Hollerius, set out nine particular objectives or ends; Savonarola prescribes seven special rules. Aelianus Montalto in chapter 26, Faventinus in his Empirical Remedies, Hercules de Saxonia and others have their different instructions and rules, all directed towards one end.

The usual method, which I intend to follow, has three parts: regulation of daily life, treatment with drugs, and surgery—that is, diet or manner of living, pharmacy, and surgery. This is the method prescribed by Wecker, Crato, Guianerius and most others. I will dwell on these and discuss them in order.