The Anatomy of Melancholy

I shall conclude with Scaliger: “We are by no means whole human beings, but parts of one. Something can be made from us all together, and not very much at that; from each of us separately, almost nothing.” Besides, as Nazianzen puts it, “God has willed that many things should remain hidden from us.” And with Seneca, chapter 35, On Comets: “Why are we surprised that such rare spectacles of the world have not been brought under fixed laws and are not yet understood? Many peoples know the sky only by its outward appearance. Perhaps a time will come when the passage of days, through the patient work of a longer age, brings to light what is now hidden. One age is not enough; posterity,” and so forth.

When God sees fit, he will reveal these mysteries to mortal men and at last show a few what he has concealed so long. For I share the view that Columbus did not discover America by chance: God directed him to discover it at that time. To Columbus it was contingent, but to God necessary. He reveals and conceals to whom he will and when he will. And as one writer said of history and the records of former times, “God, in his providence, checks our presumptuous inquiry by wrapping everything in uncertainty, shutting us out from remote antiquity, and confining our search to the span of a few ages.”

Many good things once used by our predecessors have been lost, as Panciroli will explain more fully; many new things are invented daily for the public good. So kingdoms, people, and knowledge ebb and flow, are hidden and revealed; and when all is done, as the Preacher concluded, “There is nothing new under the sun.” But my melancholy spaniels give tongue, my quarry has been flushed, and I must come down at once and follow.

Jason Pratensis, in his book On Diseases of the Head, in the chapter on melancholy, gives these words from Galen: “Let them come to me to learn what food and drink they should use. Besides that, I shall teach them what quality of surrounding air to choose, which winds and countries to seek, and which to avoid.”

From these lines we may gather that, among other things, improving the air is necessary to this cure of melancholy. This is done by correcting either natural or artificial air. Natural air is what we have the power to choose or avoid: either broadly, in countries and provinces, or particularly, in cities, towns, villages, or private houses. I have already shown the harm that extremes of heat and cold do in this illness. The mean must therefore be good: air that is temperate, clear, calm, and free of bogs, fens, mists, all kinds of decay, and infectious, filthy, offensive smells.

All geographers praise the Egyptians as “cheerful,” a witty and merry nation: I can attribute this to no cause but the clarity of their air. Hector Boece and Cardano record that those who live in the Orkneys are fair in complexion, long-lived, exceptionally healthy, and free from every kind of bodily and mental infirmity because of the sharp, purifying air that comes from the sea. The Boeotians in Greece were dull and sluggish—“thick-witted Boeotians”—because of the foggy air in which they lived,