Bile and boil

Use in the book

The opening supplies two different Latin senses. Burton’s borrowed Bilem names anger among his mixed reactions to the world; the following discussion places bodily language within a literary description of emotion. In the story of Democritus, by contrast, atra bilis is the substance or affliction whose seat he hopes to discover through dissection. Later an ant’s bilis represents resentment and power to retaliate. Burton’s accompanying English substitutes a bee’s sting: the two creatures and bodily images must not be silently made identical.

In the retention chapter, de atra bile is the title of Prosper Calenus’s book On Black Bile. Calenus is cited for the claim that constipation disturbs both the bodily organ and the mind. A few passages later, English bile appears beside ulcer and issue among discharging sores whose closure is said to cause melancholy. The ensuing head-wound report gives “lucid intervals” in Latin but the less qualified “was well” in Burton’s English; it is attributed testimony, not an established clinical result. The spelling boyl recurs when Hercules de Saxonia blames a dried-up outlet and Amatus Lusitanus supplies another claimed wound-related cure. Pontano’s account instead uses boyle of heated water, an analogy for changes in black bile’s qualities, with an astrological explanation in its continuation.

Boil also enters the political body metaphor. Burton stigmatizes groups in his discussion of idleness as “the boils of the commonwealth,” adapting Plutarch’s broader language of public diseases; he later compares beggars to ulcers and boils that should be purged. The images preserve the hostility of his social argument without describing actual skin conditions. Conversely, Lazarus’s boyles are bodily sores in a consolatory example of continued trust amid poverty and suffering.

The black-bile metaphor extends through Burton’s accounts of spirits and despair. He first reports a woman allegedly cured of demonic affliction by purging black choler, then suggests that this explains the devil’s-bath name. Elsewhere he records an explicit disagreement: some authorities explain extraordinary speech entirely through disordered humour and its response to purging; Burton himself prefers a theory in which evil spirits exploit that disorder. In the despair chapter black choler becomes a bath, shoehorn and bait for evil spirits, with “as it were” qualifying their entry. Later qualifications matter: unwanted terrible thoughts are distinguished from willing consent, natural bodily causes of frightening perceptions remain possible, and the repeated bath metaphor is accompanied by a stated limit on the devil’s power. These are historical bodily and theological accounts, not present-day explanations of illness.

Related entries

Chirurgery

Issue

Evacuation and retention

Choler

Humour

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 9–14Latin bile as anger and black bile as the object of Democritus’s imagined anatomical investigation.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 10–12Boils as a hostile political-body image; the source attribution is qualified by the editorial note.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 5–7The related ulcers-and-boils comparison and the marginal bodily-purging analogy.
4. Subsection 2 a Digression on the Nature of Spirits Evil Angels or Devils And… · paragraphs 15–19Reported purging of black choler and the devil’s-bath metaphor within a mediated bodily/spiritual causation account.
5. Subsection 4. The Stars as a Cause. Signs From Physiognomy, Metoposcopy And… · paragraphs 8–10Boiling water as an analogy for black bile’s changing qualities, followed by Pontano’s astrological claim.
6. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraphs 5–8Calenus’s book title On Black Bile and the constipation argument.
7. Subsection 4 Retention and Evacuation as Causes, and How They Act · paragraph 19English bile as boil beside ulcer and issue; the wound case’s lucid intervals and English “was well.”
8. Subsection 3. Causes of Head Melancholy · paragraphs 24–28Boyl as a dried-up sore in attributed explanations of head-melancholy.
9. Member 3 Immediate Cause of the Preceding Symptoms · paragraphs 2–4Natural explanations, a reported dispute about possession, and Burton’s own preference using the bath metaphor.
10. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults… · paragraphs 5–7An ant’s bile and Burton’s different bee-and-sting gloss in a warning about retaliation.
11. Causes of Despair: The Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness Of… · paragraphs 7–10Black choler as bath, shoehorn and bait in the account of despair and temptation.
12. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 28–31The bath metaphor repeated beside an account of involuntary, resisted thoughts.
13. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 39–41Lazarus’s physical sores in consolation.
14. Treatment of Despair Through Medicine, Good Counsel, Consolation, and So On · paragraphs 1–5Possible bodily causes of frightening experiences, limits on the devil’s power, and mixed remedies in the historical account.

In this edition

The essential local comparisons are “de atra bile” → “On Black Bile”, “bile” → “boil”, and “Black choler” → “Black bile”. The first translates a Latin title; the second distinguishes an English skin sore from the humoral noun; the third modernizes the humour’s name. Boyl also becomes “boil” in the larger drying-up construction, while “full of boyles” becomes the broader “covered in sores” for Lazarus.

The rendering of Bilem as “anger” makes the emotional meaning explicit. The modern text instead translates the ant’s bile literally and then preserves Burton’s separate bee-and-sting sentence. “balneum Diaboli, the Divels bath” becomes “the devil’s bath, the devil’s bathing place”: both the Latin metaphor and Burton’s English restatement remain represented. The earlier version retains “the devil’s bath” twice. None of these rendering choices erases the disagreement, attribution or later qualifications of the surrounding argument.

atra bilis

Printed “atra bilis” (Latin; phrase).

Black bile.

Here: The humour is identified with melancholy in the story of Democritus’s anatomical investigations.

Context: Burton recounts the literary Hippocratic letter tradition, not an independently established dissection or cure.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: this atra bilis, or melancholy

Modern rendering: this “black bile,” or melancholy

Word and construction: Atra contributes black and bilis bile; the source’s alternative designation or melancholy is retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

balneum Diaboli

Printed “balneum Diaboli” (Latin; phrase).

The devil’s bath.

Here: The metaphor makes melancholy humour a place or medium that encourages demonic action.

Context: Burton’s metaphor belongs to his historical combined bodily and spiritual explanation, not to a current medical claim.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: balneum Diaboli, the Divels bath

Modern rendering: the devil’s bath, the devil’s bathing place

Word and construction: Balneum contributes bath and Diaboli the devil’s; the second English phrase renders Burton’s separate English gloss, so both occurrences survive.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

balneum Diaboli · Balneum Diaboli

Printed “Balneum Diaboli” (Latin; phrase).

The devil’s bath.

Here: The bath metaphor supports Burton’s preference for demonic participation after he has reported a wholly humoral account.

Context: Guianerius, Montaltus, Pomponazzi and Lemnius supply the bodily explanation; Burton explicitly says he would rather agree with Avicenna and associates on spirits exploiting corrupted humours.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Balneum Diaboli, the devils bath

Modern rendering: “the devil’s bath”—the devil’s bath

Word and construction: Balneum supplies bath and Diaboli the devil’s; the rendering preserves the Latin phrase and Burton’s English gloss as two consecutive bath expressions.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bilis · Bilem

Printed “Bilem” (Latin; lemma).

Bile; figuratively, anger or resentment.

Here: The bodily noun stands for the anger paired with laughter in Burton’s response to the world.

Context: Burton adapts a literary line for his own mixed response; this is not a diagnosis of black bile.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Bilem sæpe, jocum vestri movere tumultus

Modern rendering: Your commotions have often stirred my anger and my laughter

Word and construction: Bilem contributes anger; jocum contributes laughter; vestri tumultus supplies your commotions, and sæpe movere supplies have often stirred.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bilis · bile

Printed “bile” (Latin; lemma).

Bile, here black bile in the title of a medical book.

Here: The ablative bile follows de in the title of Prosper Calenus’s work.

Context: Burton cites Calenus as an authority for constipation disturbing mind as well as bodily organ; the title itself is not a patient diagnosis.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: de atra bile

Modern rendering: On Black Bile

Word and construction: De contributes On, atra Black and bile Bile; the modern title capitalizes the English words.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

bilis

Printed “bilis” (Latin; lemma).

Bile; figuratively, anger or resentment.

Here: An ant’s bile represents the capacity of even a small creature to retaliate.

Context: Burton uses a proverbial warning that wrongdoing invites a response; his following English changes the ant’s bile to a bee’s sting.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: & formicæ sua bilis inest

Modern rendering: and an ant has its own bile

Word and construction: Formicæ supplies an ant; sua its own; bilis bile; inest is reorganized as has. The separately printed bee-and-sting gloss is not the literal equivalent of this Latin.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

black choler

Printed “Black choler” (English; phrase).

Black bile, the melancholic humour.

Here: The humoral name supplies the substance imagined as a shoehorn and bait for evil spirits.

Context: Burton describes a historical theory of temptation through bodily disposition, retaining as it were for the spirits’ entrance.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Black choler

Modern rendering: Black bile

Word and construction: Black is retained; choler is modernized as bile without turning the subsequent metaphors into physical objects.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

boil · boils

Printed “boils” (English; lemma).

An inflamed skin swelling or sore; here a hostile image of a social nuisance.

Here: Burton calls the listed social groups boils of the political body.

Context: The metaphor is Burton’s application of the Plutarchan diseases-of-the-commonwealth comparison; the edition warns against treating it as Lycurgus speaking about English beggars.

Source: original body

Source and modern wording: the boils of the commonwealth

Word and construction: Boils is retained as the plural bodily metaphor; of the commonwealth identifies the imagined political body.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

boil · bile

Printed “bile” (English; lemma).

An inflamed skin swelling or sore.

Here: Bile is an English spelling of boil in a list of discharging sores.

Context: Burton reports the theory that closing an outlet causes melancholy, followed by a head-wound case attributed to Hercules de Saxonia and Bernard of Gordon.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: bile

Modern rendering: boil

Word and construction: Bile is replaced by boil to distinguish the sore from the humoral noun.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

boil · boyl

Printed “boyl” (English; lemma).

An inflamed skin swelling or sore.

Here: A boil that has dried up is one of the closed outlets blamed for head-melancholy.

Context: Hercules de Saxonia is said to hold this cause; the following wound-and-madness cure is attributed to Amatus Lusitanus.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a cautery, or boyl dried up, or any issue

Modern rendering: a cautery wound, boil or any draining sore dries up

Word and construction: Boyl contributes boil; the modern construction makes drying up apply to the listed outlets and clarifies cautery and issue.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

boil · boyles

Printed “boyles” (English; lemma).

An inflamed skin swelling or sore.

Here: The bodily sores of the biblical beggar Lazarus accompany poverty in an example of continued trust.

Context: Burton presents Lazarus as a consolatory religious example, not as one of the social groups stigmatized as political boils.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: full of boyles

Modern rendering: covered in sores

Word and construction: Boyles is broadened to sores; full of becomes covered in, describing bodily affliction.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

boil · boyle

Printed “boyle” (English; lemma).

To become intensely heated and bubble as a liquid.

Here: Water’s boiling is an analogy for naturally cold black bile becoming hot.

Context: Burton reports Pontano’s account of humoral variation; the next paragraph attributes the imbalance chiefly to the heavens.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: water may be made to boyle

Modern rendering: water can be made to boil

Word and construction: Boyle contributes boil as a verb of heating, not the noun for a sore; may be made to is rendered can be made to.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.