Bowels

Use in the book

The anatomical sense is wider than the everyday modern phrase “moving the bowels.” Hypochondriacal melancholy is said to arise from “Bowels” and then specified through liver, spleen and mesentery. In the account of possible diabolical causes, the bowels are bodily organs whose operations an invisible agent allegedly obstructs; the original marginal Viscerum actiones corresponds to their workings. Burton reports the claim through authorities. It is neither an independent observation of supernatural action nor a restriction to intestinal function. By contrast, the marginal Alvus astrictus belongs to the case of a constipated merchant, and beneficium ventris to instructions for regular evacuation. These narrower occurrences explain why one English anatomical vocabulary can cover different local scopes. The Latin alvus itself has a broader alimentary use when a quoted comic verse describes people cramming herbs into their bellies. Piso’s “Beneficium ventris” also appears in Burton’s main text, where Burton explains evacuation as the belly’s “benefit, help or pleasure.”

Animal entrails appear in several sharply different activities. The preliminary account of Democritus depicts him examining dissected animals, supplying an image for Burton’s own anatomy. The diet chapter lists “bowels” and “entrals” among animal foods rejected as difficult to digest. The religious polemic later disparages divination through animal viscera, using a deliberately degrading Latin phrase about “dung-heaps of entrails.” Dissection, eating and divination concern inward parts but have different agents and purposes.

Bodily suffering is repeatedly made inward self-consumption. An idle body preys upon its own bowels, like a commonwealth turning to civil war when it lacks an external enemy. Persistent sorrow gnaws like the vulture at Tityus’s entrails; the prognosis explicitly interprets that punishment as anxiety and gnawing care. The love discussion reuses the myth for lovers’ inward torments, and a Latin emblem verse makes blind love consume its own viscera. These images describe pain through the body without requiring the literal event represented by the myth. The scholar flattered into excessive labour likewise “eviscerates” himself like a spider: his work is imagined as spun from his body until he exhausts himself. A later supposition reverses the emphasis: even a scholar with “æreis intestinis,” bronze bowels or a body of brass, who survives those hardships and gains qualifications may still find no appointment. The metallic inward parts figure extraordinary endurance, not freedom from social obstacles.

Other metaphors preserve the inside/outside relation. The prodigal buries inherited possessions in his bowels, making consumption of food an image for consumption of an estate. Miners enter the bowels of the earth in pursuit of riches; Burton’s imaginative journey and discussion of springs use the same expression for underground spaces and channels. The earth need not be asserted to possess literal human intestines for the metaphor to work.

In the polemic against enforced celibacy and restrictions on marriage, Burton contrasts rescuing a neighbour’s burning house with ignoring the sexual suffering of one’s own “bowels,” immediately restated as flesh and blood. The modern edition makes the reference to children explicit. His accusation concerns the failure of people and institutions to care for those closely connected to them; the surrounding anti-monastic allegations remain polemic rather than independently established facts.

Tender feeling produces a related but distinct extension. In the account attributed to Ficino, a vapour enters a lover’s bowels, and the endearment “my dear bowels” identifies the beloved with one’s inward self. The first use participates in a physiological explanation; the second is affectionate address. In the religious discussion, Psalm 22’s heart melting within the bowels expresses inward anguish. Burton has introduced these biblical complaints as temporary affliction, so they should not be detached and made proofs of irreversible abandonment. Earlier, after the symptom catalogue, he says everyone carries rods of suffering in their bowels. The point is shared vulnerability, pity for sufferers, medical help and self-examination before God.

Related entries

Affection; Passion; Sorrow; Hypochondria; Myrach; Meseraic; Excrements; Divination; Affinity and consanguinity (future entry outside Batch 1)

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Readeranimal entrails examined in the literary account of Democritus
2. First Partition, kinds of melancholyabdominal organs as the source of the third kind
3. First Partition, supernatural causesinternal organs in reported accounts of invisible bodily interference
4. First Partition, dietanimal bowels as food and alvus as the belly filled with herbs in comic verse
5. First Partition, suppressed evacuation and idlenessthe constipated bowel and the body that preys upon itself
6. First Partition, avarice, prodigality, praise and studythe earth’s depths, an estate consumed, the self-exhausting scholar and the supposedly bronze-bowelled survivor still lacking preferment
7. First Partition, symptoms and prognosisgnawing sorrow, shared vulnerability, kinship in the marriage polemic, and the explicit Tityus allegory
8. Second Partition, regimenbowel relief, Burton’s own explanation of Beneficium ventris, daily evacuation and the qualifying middle course
9. Second Partition, digression on airunderground inquiry and competing accounts of springs
10. Second Partition, treatmentbowel relief within a regimen also attending to the mind
11. Second Partition, treatment of windy melancholythe preserved “open the bowels” wording, the editor’s bellows suggestion and Amatus’s reported claim of success
12. Third Partition, love, [printed 246]inward torment, transmitted passion, an endearment and consuming love
13. Third Partition, religion and despairanimal viscera in the polemic against divination and the Psalm’s inward anguish

In this edition

“Bowels” can remain “bowels,” become “entrails” or “internal organs,” or be rendered by the local figurative referent. “Their own bowels” becomes “their own flesh and blood, their very children”; “my dear bowels” becomes “my dear heart.” These are different contexts, not interchangeable definitions. “In the midst of my bowels” becomes “within me” in the Psalm quotation.

The Latin phrase beneficium ventris is “Relief of the bowels” in the treatment margin; the longer daily-regimen sentence renders it as “a bowel movement.” The phrase is in the main text: the modern edition gives “the benefit of the belly,” then preserves Burton’s own explanation of the belly’s benefit, help or pleasure. The benefit here is relief through evacuation. Viscera has no universal one-organ equivalent: the dissection margin gives “entrails,” while the love margin gives “inward parts.” The printed Alvus astrictus is retained despite its irregular agreement. None of these modern explanatory renderings should be back-projected as additional words in Burton’s original. One reported wind-removal procedure has an unresolved wording: “open the bowels”. Both columns preserve it, while the editorial note observes that the described mechanism suggests opening the bellows. This is a possible reading problem, not a settled correction or an unambiguous example of ordinary bowel evacuation.

alvus

Printed “alvum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Belly as the receptacle into which people cram herbs, rather than bowel evacuation.

Argument: The bodily noun participates in a comic dietary attack on plants humans eat but cattle reject.

Context: Quoted Plautine verse as transmitted and altered by Burton; not a verified reproduction of Plautus’s exact text.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Qui herbas hujusmodi in alvum suum congerunt

Modern rendering: Those who cram such herbs into their bellies

Alignment convention

Qualification: Whole relative clause aligns; alvum suum supplies their bellies, with singular distributive Latin rendered plural.

Word and construction: component of the explicitly aligned full relative clause; not a single-word translation

Alvus astrictus

Printed “Alvus astrictus” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

A bowel unable to discharge normally, offered as the cause of the merchant’s disturbance.

Argument: Narrower intestinal sense rather than the whole abdominal viscera.

Context: Marginal summary of a reported medical case, contrasting the friends’ suspicion of a potion.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Alvus astrictus causa.

Modern rendering: A constipated bowel was the cause.

Alignment convention

Qualification: The Latin elliptically supplies no copula; English supplies was. Printed astrictus is preserved.

beneficium ventris

Printed “beneficium ventris” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Regular passage of stool, here required daily in the reported regimen.

Argument: Narrow physiological function distinguished from broad viscera.

Context: Marginal Hildesheim advice, followed by a warning against prolonged constipation.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: ut singulis diebus habeas beneficium ventris

Modern rendering: to have a bowel movement every day

Alignment convention

Qualification: The purpose clause and temporal phrase align together; the Latin second person is represented by the surrounding English instruction.

Beneficium ventris · local use 1

Printed “Beneficium ventris” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Bowel relief through evacuation, in the regimen attached to this paragraph.

Argument: Provides the shorter formula and its distinct local English rendering.

Context: Marginal summary beside daily discharge and moderation of passions.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Beneficium ventris.

Modern rendering: Relief of the bowels.

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

Beneficium ventris · local use 2

Printed “Beneficium ventris” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: Beneficium ventris

Evacuation described as the belly’s benefit or relief.

Argument: Burton supplies his own explanatory English gloss; the phrase occurs in the body as well as in margins.

Context: Piso is the naming authority; Altomarus, Laurentius and Crato supply the regimen around it.

Source: original body

Source wording: Piso calls it Beneficium ventris

Modern rendering: the benefit of the belly

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern text first translates the Latin, then separately retains Burton’s own benefit, help or pleasure explanation.

Bowels

Printed “Bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

Internal abdominal organs broadly, specified here by liver, spleen and mesentery.

Argument: Wider scope than intestines alone.

Context: Burton’s most received threefold division.

Source: original body

Source wording: from the Bowels, Liver, Spleen, or Membrane, called Mesenterium

bowels · local use 1

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

The bodily functions of internal organs.

Argument: Separates organ scope from asserted supernatural cause.

Context: Taurellus’s reported account of hidden diabolical interference.

Source: original body

Source wording: the operations of the bowels

bowels · local use 2

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

The body’s inward parts, imagined as attacked by the idle body itself.

Argument: Figurative self-consuming action with body as agent.

Context: Burton’s analogy between bodily self-torment and civil conflict.

Source: original body

Source wording: it tortures and preys upon his own bowels

bowels · local use 3

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

Bodily consumption as a metaphor for squandering inherited wealth.

Argument: Estate becomes food buried in the spender’s interior.

Context: Burton’s critique of prodigality.

Source: original body

Source wording: entombed their ancestors faire possessions in their bowels

bowels · local use 4

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

Entrails in the mythic comparison for persistent sorrow.

Argument: The later prognosis explicitly interprets the punishment as anxiety.

Context: Burton’s symptom description; laughter by fits does not cancel enduring sadness.

Source: original body

Source wording: gnawing as the vulture did Titius bowels

bowels · local use 5

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

Inward organs imagined as carrying the instruments of one’s own suffering.

Argument: Internal vulnerability is a moral and religious reflection, not blame directed solely at patients.

Context: Burton’s appeal for pity, remedies, humility and shared vigilance.

Source: original body

Source wording: since we carry them in our bowels

bowels · local use 6

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

The lover’s inner bodily parts receiving the alleged transmitted vapour.

Argument: Physiological narrative preceding a figurative endearment.

Context: Ficino’s illustration as reported by Burton.

Source: original body

Source wording: enters into Lycias bowels

bowels · local use 7

Printed “bowels” (English). Attestation: word form.

The bodily interior in which the Psalm’s heart melts like wax.

Argument: Spiritual anguish expressed bodily; not asserted permanent abandonment.

Context: Psalm 22 quotation in Burton’s account introduced as temporary affliction.

Source: original body

Source wording: in the midst of my bowels

bowels · local use 8

Printed “bowels” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording, Modern rendering: bowels

Animal intestines or inward parts considered as food, in a list of supposedly hard-to-digest meats.

Argument: An ordinary dietary use, distinct in purpose from animal dissection and divination.

Context: Burton reports Aretaeus’s list and other physicians’ rejection of these foods.

Source: original body

Source wording: heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrals

Alignment convention

Qualification: The list preserves distinct adjacent items without forcing bowels and entrals into a precise modern taxonomy.

Wider construction: heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrals → heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrails

bowels of the earth

Printed “bowels of the earth” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Hidden depths of the ground, entered by miners.

Argument: Spatial metaphor of an interior.

Context: Burton questions the pursuit of wealth beyond need.

Source: original body

Source wording: the bowels of the earth

entrails

Printed “entrals” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.

Citation key, Modern rendering: entrails

Printed form, Original wording: entrals

Animal inward parts or viscera, here considered as food beside bowels and other organs.

Argument: An ordinary dietary use, distinct in purpose from animal dissection and divination.

Context: Burton reports Aretaeus’s list and other physicians’ rejection of these foods.

Source: original body

Source wording: heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrals

Alignment convention

Qualification: The list preserves distinct adjacent items without forcing bowels and entrals into a precise modern taxonomy.

Wider construction: heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrals → heads and feet, bowels, brains, entrails

eviscerate

Printed “eviscerate” (English). Attestation: word form.

Exhaust himself by producing scholarly work as if spinning out his own innards.

Argument: An English derivative of viscera with a figurative, reflexive object.

Context: Conditional portrait of a scholar induced by flattery to overwork.

Source: original body

Source wording: he will eviscerate himself like a spider

my dear bowels

Printed “my dear bowels” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording: my dear bowels

Affectionate address to the beloved as one’s inward self or seat of tender feeling.

Argument: Distinguished from the same paragraph’s physiological entrails.

Context: Love-speech within Ficino’s reported illustration.

Source: original body

open the bowels

Printed “open the bowels” (English; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Modern rendering: open the bowels

Bowels ordinarily means intestines or inward organs. The printed command to open them is uncertain here, because the described mechanism suggests opening the bellows instead; no emendation is established.

Argument: A textual uncertainty must remain visible rather than silently emending bowels to bellows or treating this as an unambiguous evacuation idiom.

Context: Amatus Lusitanus prescribes the strange procedure and boasts of its success in the continuation; Burton reports it.

Source: original body

Alignment convention

Qualification: Both columns preserve bowels; the accompanying note suggests bellows from the mechanism but does not establish an emendation.

their own bowels

Printed “their own bowels” (English). Attestation: phrase.

Their own children or intimate kin, described as part of their bodily substance.

Argument: Preserves the earlier article’s specific kinship analysis.

Context: Burton condemns ignoring relatives’ distress in the enforced-celibacy polemic.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: their own bowels oftentimes, flesh and bloud

Modern rendering: Often their own flesh and blood, their very children

Alignment convention

Qualification: The source restatement flesh and bloud and adverb oftentimes are included to match the whole modern unit; their very children is explanatory.

viscera · local use 1

Printed “viscera” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Internal organs of dissected animals, objects of Democritus’s examination.

Argument: Anatomical investigation as an image for Burton’s project.

Context: Marginal quotation from the literary Hippocratic-letter tradition; not authenticated correspondence.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: quorum viscera rimabatur

Modern rendering: he examined their entrails

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

viscera · Viscerum

Printed “Viscerum” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Genitive plural of viscera: internal organs whose operations are allegedly obstructed.

Argument: Latin counterpart to the broad English bowels use.

Context: The devil is the implied subject in the quoted report.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: Viscerum actiones potest inhibere latenter

Modern rendering: He can secretly obstruct the workings of the internal organs

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

viscera · visceribus

Printed “visceribus” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Internal organs as the site of pain inflicted by insatiable love.

Argument: Body says young men; the marginal translation here says young people.

Context: Marginal poetic explanation of the Tityus comparison.

Source: original marginal quotation with editorial translation

Source wording, Original wording: in adolescentum visceribus

Modern rendering: on the inward parts of young people

Alignment convention

Qualification: Modern unit is the supplied editorial translation of the original marginal quotation, not Burton’s English.

viscera · local use 2

Printed “viscera” (Latin). Attestation: word form.

Inward parts of personified blind love, consumed by love itself.

Argument: Self-consuming passion; sua is its own, not the variant my noted elsewhere.

Context: Emblem verse following the heated-pot image.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording: Sic sua consumit viscera cæcus amor

Modern rendering: So blind love consumes its own entrails

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original and modern units are exact substrings of the paired source.

æreis intestinis

Printed “æreis intestinis” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: æreis intestinis

With bronze bowels: a figurative constitution strong enough to survive scholarly hardship.

Argument: A concessive supposition about endurance leads to a further obstacle, lack of preferment.

Context: Burton asks the reader to suppose that the scholar survives and qualifies; success in finding employment does not follow.

Source: original body

Source wording: æreis intestinis, with a body of brass

Modern rendering: with bowels of bronze

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern text translates the Latin before preserving Burton’s broader English gloss, with a body of brass.

è viscerum sterquiliniis

Printed “è viscerum sterquiliniis” (Latin). Attestation: phrase.

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording: è viscerum sterquiliniis

A degrading phrase for the animal innards used in divination.

Argument: The Latin insult and Burton’s following English restatement remain separate.

Context: Burton’s religious polemic against pagan oracles.

Source: original body

Modern rendering: from the dung-heaps of entrails

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original and modern units are exact substrings of the paired source.