The Anatomy of Melancholy

SECTION 2. MEMBER 1. SUBSECTION 1. Diet corrected in the choice of food.

Diet—the regulation of daily life, or manner of living—according to Fuchsius and others, includes the six non-natural things I have already specified. These are major causes of illness; corrected, they form the whole or the chief part of the cure. Johannes Arculanus, in chapter 16 of his commentary on the ninth book of Rhazes, considers the regulation of these six things a sufficient cure.

Guianerius, treatise 15, chapter 9, calls them “the proper and primary treatment”—the principal cure. So do Montanus, Crato, Mercurialis, Altomarus and others: this is what should be tried first. Lemnius, in his Institutes, chapter 22, calls them the hinges on which our health turns: there is no hope of recovery without them.

Reinerus Solenander, in his seventh consultation, concerning a young Spanish gentlewoman who was so melancholy that she detested all company and would not sit at table with her close friends, prescribes this treatment above all others: nothing can be achieved without it. Aretaeus, an ancient physician, considers in book 1, chapter 7, that this alone is enough if the patient's illness has not advanced too far.

Crato, in a consultation for a noble patient, tells him plainly that, if His Highness will only follow a good regimen, he can guarantee the restoration of his former health. Montanus, in consultation 27, concerning a French nobleman, urges His Lordship to be extremely careful about his regimen, or all his other medicine will achieve little.

I find the same instruction word for word in Julius Caesar Claudinus, response 34; Scholtz's consultations, number 183; and Trallianus, book 1, chapter 16. Laelius a Fonte of Gubbio often boasts that he has achieved more cures of this kind by correcting the patient's regimen than through all other medicine combined.

So, in a word, I may say to most melancholy people what the fox said to the weasel that could not get out of the granary: “You must return lean through the hole you entered lean.” The six non-natural things caused the illness, and they must cure it.

Although I discuss these matters as particularly suited to the climate of melancholy, what is said here—like the writings of the man mentioned in Cicero, composed especially for the benefit of his friends at Tarentum and in Sicily—will nevertheless generally serve for most other diseases too, and help them likewise, if it is followed.

Of these six non-natural things, the first is diet in the strict sense: food and drink. Here we must consider the kind, quantity and quality, choosing the opposite of what was described earlier.

As to kind, the foods generally recommended are moist, easily digested, and unlikely to generate wind; not fried or roasted, but boiled, say Valescus, Altomarus, Piso and others—hot and moist, and nourishing. Crato, consultation 21, book 2, allows roast meat if the burnt or scorched surface, what we call the browned part, is cut away. Salvianus, book 2, chapter 1, vehemently condemns cold and dry foods.