Patient

Use in the book

The dedicated subsection makes the patient an active participant in treatment. After requiring a skilful and honest physician, Burton asks for cooperation, expenditure that does not sacrifice health merely to save money, disclosure of distress, willingness to recover and timely action. These are the responsibilities he assigns within a relationship governed by medical advice; they are not proof that failure to recover is the sufferer’s fault.

The argument moves between opposed excesses. Burton condemns refusal of useful remedies but also excessive resort to medication and exaggeration of minor complaints. His generalizations about gentlewomen and Cappivaccius’s claim about all melancholy sufferers remain polemical and attributed. The word patient itself does not contain those accusations. The ensuing confidence discussion is also stronger and stranger than an ordinary instruction to be hopeful: the body asks the practitioner to promise help or at least make the patient believe it, while the marginal quotation explicitly allows the promise even when the practitioner privately despairs.

Perseverance and obedience follow. Frequent changes of doctors and medicines are criticized, and Montanus is cited for prolonged endurance and even lifelong attention to treatment. These claims have to be read with the preceding physician’s duty not to abandon an unwilling patient and with the warning against excessive prescribing. Burton’s account distributes obligations and errors on both sides; it cannot fairly be reduced to a demand for unlimited medication or to a charge against every distressed patient.

The final caution concerns practising on oneself from a book. The same thing may help one person and harm another. The ass-and-mule fable, the reported confusion of a dram with a scruple, and Burton’s own story of a friend taking hellebore illustrate the danger of transferring a remedy without adequate knowledge. The subsection ends with considerable relief, if not a complete cure, rather than an unconditional promise of recovery.

A later section makes the limit of isolated self-command explicit: if the patient cannot resist the passions alone, friends or physician must supply support, and all parties must cooperate. The non-medical senses remain equally useful. The same active–passive distinction divides understanding into Agent and Patient: the latter receives and keeps intelligible forms, compared with a pupil taught by the active understanding. A patient mind is a forbearing mind. In the account of love transmitted through eyes, the patient is the recipient of action from an agent; the corresponding Latin patientibus denotes things acted upon in an account of alleged demonic manipulation of natural causes. These historical explanations are not present-day medical recommendations.

Related entries

Physician

Cure

Physick

Patience

Experimental

Receipt

Apothecaries measures

Action

Cause

Places to read

1. Subsection 10. Understanding · paragraphs 24–30Active and passive understanding; Patient as the receptive intellectual power.
2. The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection… · paragraphs 40–42Active causes and things acted upon in reported demonic operations.
3. Member 4. Subsection 1. Physician, Patient, Medicine · paragraphs 16–17The corresponding responsibilities and limits of the physician.
4. Subsection 2. Concerning the Patient · paragraphs 18–42The patient’s cooperation, confidence, endurance and risks of self-treatment.
5. Subsection 2 Help From Friends Through Counsel and Comfort Gentle and Harsh… · paragraphs 1–6Support required when the patient cannot resist alone.
6. Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraphs 16–18Patient as a forbearing disposition in adversity.
7. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of The… · paragraphs 8–10The agent–patient relation in an account of love’s transmission.

In this edition

The paired rendering turns the patient’s being “conformable, and content to be ruled” into cooperation and acceptance of guidance within the full clause. It retains the treatment relationship while making the older idiom readable. “a patient and quiet minde” becomes “A patient, quiet mind,” retaining the adjective.

“the spirits about the patients” becomes “the spirits surrounding the person affected.” The original’s unmarked possessive construction is reorganized, and person affected identifies the passive party rather than a plurality of medical patients. “agentes cum patientibus” becomes “active agents and the things they act upon”; the Latin patientibus contributes the things acted upon within that whole construction.

Patient · patient · local use 1

Printed “patient” (English; family).

A person suffering illness and receiving or seeking medical care.

Here: The patient is given responsibilities within an asymmetrical relationship of medical guidance.

Context: Burton makes cooperation a condition of the physician’s success, after requiring that physician to be skilled and honest.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: if his patient will not be conformable, and content to be ruled by him

Modern rendering: if his patient will not cooperate and accept his guidance

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “patients” (English; family).

Here: The comparison attributes special demands for changed treatment to melancholy patients.

Context: Mercurialis is the reported authority. The adjacent claim that all melancholy people magnify symptoms is attributed to Cappivaccius and remains a historical generalization.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: more troublesome to their Physicians, then other ordinary patients

Modern rendering: more troublesome to their physicians than ordinary patients

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Patient” (English; family).

Here: Confidence names trust and hope within the treatment relationship.

Context: Burton’s body reports a demand for physician confidence and assurances; the attached Latin marginal quotation explicitly extends this to assurances when the practitioner privately despairs. Neither is a demonstrated mechanism of cure.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: A third thing to be required in a Patient, is confidence

Modern rendering: A third requirement in a patient is confidence

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “patient” (English; family).

Here: The patient can act on himself, but Burton warns against transferring a printed remedy without judgment.

Context: The caution concerns self-treatment without a reputable physician’s consent and emphasizes that the same remedy can help one person and harm another.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the patient be not too bold to practice upon himself

Modern rendering: the patient must not be too bold in treating himself

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Patient” (English; family).

Here: The patient’s inability makes additional help from friends or physician necessary.

Context: Burton’s condition limits a purely self-help reading; the following Hippocratic citation requires cooperation from all parties.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: When the Patient of himself is not able to resist

Modern rendering: When the patient cannot by himself resist

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Patient · patient · local use 2

Printed “patient” (English; lemma).

Enduring trouble with composure or forbearance.

Here: The adjective names the disposition credited with producing peace and contentment.

Context: Burton asserts this in consolation against poverty and adversity; it does not identify a sick person.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a patient and quiet minde

Modern rendering: A patient, quiet mind

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Patient · patients

Printed “patients” (English; family).

The person or subject acted upon, opposed to an agent.

Here: The patient is the recipient of the eye-borne action in a reported account of love’s transmission.

Context: Burton presents a historical explanation involving spirits and blood; the printed patients has no modern possessive apostrophe.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the spirits about the patients

Modern rendering: the spirits surrounding the person affected

Qualification: The exact printed form patients occurs in a singular agent–patient construction. The modern rendering reorganizes it as person affected; it is not evidence for multiple medical patients.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “patientibus” (Latin; family).

Here: Things acted upon, paired with active causes in an account of alleged demonic operations.

Context: Burton reports the agreement of Daneau, Erastus and theologians and invokes Augustine; the formula is not a continuous quotation of Augustine in the supplied note.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: agentes cum patientibus

Modern rendering: active agents and the things they act upon

Alignment scope: Whole agent–patient construction; Latin cum plus ablative is rendered as an English coordinated phrase with a relative clause.

Word and construction: Patientibus supplies the passive recipients, rendered the things they act upon; agentes supplies active agents, and cum expresses their conjunction.

Sense relation: The same lexical sense in a further distinct local use or qualification.

Further local use

Printed “Patient” (English; family).

Here: Passive or receptive understanding, contrasted with the active intellectual power.

Context: Burton reports a common division of understanding; Patient here qualifies the receptive intellectual power and does not mean forbearing or under medical treatment.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Agent, and Patient

Modern rendering: active and passive

Word and construction: Patient contributes passive within the pair; understanding is the noun supplied by the surrounding sentence. This is not the adjective describing a forbearing temperament.

Sense relation: Adjectival philosophical application of the passive-recipient sense, contrasted with the separate enduring-temperament adjective.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.