The Anatomy of Melancholy

The cure of jealousy: avoiding occasions for it, keeping occupied; good counsel; disregarding it, not watching women or locking them up; concealing it, and so on.

As with every other form of melancholy, some doubt whether this illness can be cured. They think it is like gout, or those hired Swiss soldiers whom we commonly call Walloons: once they take possession of a castle, they can never be driven out.

He who fears she may not be his, lest someone take her from him, Will scarcely be cured even by Machaon’s aid.

This is the cruel wound whose pain No potent liquid or plaster can relieve, No knowledge of the stars, no depth of magic Devised by that great scholar Zoroaster: A wound that so infects the soul and heart That it overpowers all our sense and reason; A wound whose pang and torment last so long That it may rightly be called incurable.

Yet I will say again what I have said before about other melancholy: it may be cured, or at least lessened, by some opposing passion, good counsel and persuasion, if it is resisted at the outset, opposed in good time, “and, as the ancients maintain, its nails are trimmed before they grow too long.”

There is no better way to resist or repel it than to avoid idleness, remaining earnestly occupied with important matters, to drive those empty fears, foolish fancies and troublesome suspicions out of his head; and then to let his sensible friends persuade him to listen to their good counsel and advice,

and to consider wisely how greatly he discredits himself and his friends, dishonours his children, disgraces his family and makes his shame public. Like a trumpeter of his own misery, he broadcasts it, wears himself down, and grieves himself and others. Let him consider what evidence of weakness it is; how absurd in its own nature, how ridiculous and brutish a passion, how foolish and hateful. For, as Jerome aptly says, “He makes himself hated, and finally becomes hateful to himself”: others hate him, and at last he hates himself for it. What a reckless illness, mad and furious! If only he will hear them speak, he may undoubtedly be cured.

Joan, queen of Spain, whom I mentioned before, was sent under the pretext of a change of air to Complutum, or Alcalá de Henares, where Ximenius, archbishop of Toledo, then lived, so that his good counsel might relieve her—as it did for the time being. “For an illness of the soul, if concealed, tortures and overturns it, and no medicine can remove it more quickly than a sensible person’s consoling words.”

I will not insert consoling sayings here for this purpose, or anticipate anyone’s invention, but leave each person to expand on the matter as their own judgment thinks fit. Let him consult Sirach 9:1, “Do not be jealous of the wife of your bosom”; read Ximenius’s consoling and forceful speech on this subject in the author himself, as Gomesius records it; consult Chaloner’s On the English Commonwealth, book 9, or Cælia’s Epistles, and so on.