From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordBelching is the release of stomach wind through the mouth; Burton characterizes it as sharp, stinking or fulsome in different symptom lists.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe symptom catalogue gives sensory specificity to belching: sharp belchings stand beside foul crudities, bowel heat, rumbling and cramps.
- In this editionThe modern text renders “sharp belchings” as “sour belching,” supported by the marginal acidi ructus, and flatuous as flatulent.
- A place to readWind-producing drinks and the qualification supplied by custom.
Meaning
Belching is the release of stomach wind through the mouth; Burton characterizes it as sharp, stinking or fulsome in different symptom lists. Wind is gas or a wind-like bodily agent in the historical digestive explanation, while windy may describe a drink thought to generate it or the melancholy associated with it. Neither windy nor flatuous here means merely trivial talk, although a separate description of ambition does use windy figuratively.
Use in the book
The symptom catalogue gives sensory specificity to belching: sharp belchings stand beside foul crudities, bowel heat, rumbling and cramps. The next unit says sufferers cannot endure their own fulsome belchings. The adjective thus measures the offensive experience rather than the mere quantity expelled. An earlier list makes the belches sharp and stinking, “as if” food were putrefied in the stomach or fish had been eaten. The comparison must not become evidence that the patient really ate fish or that every belch proves putrefaction.
Rumbling is the audible internal disturbance associated with wind. Burton's later causal explanation proceeds in stages: rumbling comes from wind, and wind from poor concoction, weak natural heat or disordered heat and cold. In the abdominal catalogue, incompletely digested matter also gives rise to windy vapours ascending to the brain and troubling imagination. These are related historical explanations, not interchangeable names: wind and rumbling are not the same event, and the whole doctrine of vapours belongs to its earlier article.
The distinction matters when sensation becomes an explanation of what is inside the body. A person troubled by rising vapours, cramps and rumbling insists that he contains a serpent, another that he contains frogs. The ensuing story describes the swallowed-frogspawn belief as a conceit strengthened by fear and imagination. Burton does not certify the animals' presence; he explains how experienced movement and an interpretation become difficult to disentangle.
The adjective windy can refer to a supposed propensity without guaranteeing harm. Cider and perry are classed as windy, yet Burton immediately says that habitual drinkers in several regions are not harmed by them. Their suitability depends on custom and the drinker, not just the abstract quality. Similarly, the statement that “these windy flatuous” sufferers have lucid intervals is qualified: symptoms are usually less continuous and come by fits, not necessarily absent altogether. The same unit attributes sexual inclination to wind and reports Rhasis's view of relief through intercourse, a historical claim rather than contemporary advice.
A separate figurative passage calls ambition a windy thing in a saying assigned to Seneca. The adjoining words vain, anxious and fearful make the force one of emptiness and instability, while Sisyphus's endlessly rolled stone images effort without rest. This is not the symptom of abdominal gas in an ambitious person. The small figurative branch is retained to prevent a bodily gloss from being imposed wherever the adjective appears.
Related entries
- Hypochondria: the hypochondriacal regions and disease classification.
- Concoction: digestion and undigested matter.
- Vapours: vapours and their proposed bodily routes.
- Fulsome: fulsome as offensive rather than abundant.
Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.
Places to read
- Subsection 3 Habit in Diet, Pleasure, Appetite and Necessity How They Cause or Prevent Melancholy · paragraph 40Wind-producing drinks and the qualification supplied by custom.
- Subsection 11. The Concupiscible Appetite: Desires and Ambition as Causes · paragraph 21Ambition called a windy thing in an attributed saying.
- Section 3. Member 1. Subsection 1. Symptoms or Signs of Melancholy in the Body · paragraph 9Sharp, stinking belches and a comparison with putrefied food.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 13Sour belching, wind and rumbling in the symptom catalogue; marginal acidi ructus.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 14Sufferers recoil from their own offensive belches.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 18Windy vapours assigned a route from digestion to imagination.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 19Rumbling interpreted as serpents or frogs within.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 21Flatuous melancholy, intermittent symptoms and attributed sexual effects.
- Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraph 10Rumbling, wind and deficient digestive heat as distinct stages.
In this edition
The modern text renders “sharp belchings” as “sour belching,” supported by the marginal acidi ructus, and flatuous as flatulent. “Rumbling in the guts” becomes “Rumbling in the bowels,” keeping the sound apart from its alleged cause. Windy drinks are rendered as drinks that “produce wind,” making the adjective's causal use explicit. The historical explanation is preserved rather than restated in modern gastroenterological terms.
windy drinks
Drinks thought to produce intestinal or stomach wind. The immediate continuation says established local drinkers suffer no harm, qualifying the general classification.
Original wording: “Cider and Perry are windy drinks”
Modern wording: “Cider and perry produce wind”
Lookup: windy: wind-producing.
a windy thing
An empty or insubstantial thing, here ambition. The saying is assigned to Seneca and developed through anxious ambition; it does not describe abdominal disease.
Original wording: “a windy thing, a vain, solicitous, and fearful thing”
Modern wording: “a windy thing, a vain, anxious and fearful thing”
Lookup: windy: vain.
stinking belchings
Foul-smelling eructations. The following as if introduces comparison with putrefied food, not confirmation of its presence.
Original wording: “continuall, sharp, & stinking belchings”
Modern wording: “continual sour and foul-smelling belching”
Lookup: belchings; belching; eructation.
sharp belchings
Sour belching. The marginal acidi ructus supports sharp as sour here; sharp does not simply mean loud or sudden.
Original wording: “sharp belchings”
Modern wording: “sour belching”
Lookup: sharp belching; sour belching.
The marginal original “Acidi ructus” is translated “Sour belches” in the accompanying note; this supplies the Latin wording behind the sour sense. Lookup: acidi ructus.
fulsom belchings
Belches offensive to the sufferer. Their own marks the source of the offence, not a complaint about another person. Fulsome remains owned by Fulsome.
Original wording: “they cannot endure their own fulsom belchings”
Modern wording: “They cannot bear their own foul belching”
Lookup: foul belching.
Rumbling in the guts
Sounds or rumbling movements within the bowels. The historical causal account distinguishes the perceived rumbling from wind and wind from failed digestion.
Original wording: “Rumbling in the guts, is caused from wind”
Modern wording: “Rumbling in the bowels is caused by wind”
Lookup: rumbling; guts: rumbling.
wind
Bodily gas or a wind-like agent in the historical account of digestion. The alternatives give proposed causes within humoral physiology; they are not modern mechanisms supplied by the lexicon.
Original wording: “wind from ill concoction, weakness of naturall heat, or a distempered heat and cold”
Modern wording: “wind by poor digestion, weakness of natural heat, or disordered heat and cold”
Lookup: winde; wind: digestive.
windy vapors
Wind-like emanations thought to rise from undigested material to the brain. The phrase supplies a physical agent and route for mental effects; the wider vapour family remains under Vapours.
Original wording: “windy vapors ascend up to the brain which trouble the imagination”
Modern wording: “windy vapours rise to the brain, disturbing the imagination”
Lookup: windy vapours.
these windy flatuous
People with the wind-associated or flatulent kind of melancholy. The adjectives are used substantivally for sufferers. The continuation qualifies the intervals as usually less continuous symptoms.
Original wording: “these windy flatuous have, lucida intervalla”
Modern wording: “Those with this windy, flatulent melancholy have one advantage over other melancholic people: “lucid intervals.””
Lookup: flatuous; flatulent.