Coma and lethargy

Use in the book

Placement is part of the meaning. Caro stands with vertigo, incubus, apoplexy and falling sickness in the list of disorders belonging to the ventricles and related structures. Lethargie and the sleep labels occur later, among disorders conceived in the substance of the brain. Between them, Stupor is listed among diseases of the nerves, where the editor renders it as numbness or loss of sensation. Thus the modern explanatory word “stupor” must not make the catalogue look as though Burton printed one identical condition in each place.

Lethargies reappear when Burton insists on the power of bodily humours and spirits to disturb the soul. The preceding paragraph makes understanding dependent on the lower senses and the weakened will unable to restrain them; Burton then endorses the claim that melancholy, madness, apoplexies and lethargies arise from this inward bodily disposition. He is not merely quoting a symptom list here: “I must needs conclude” marks his argumentative assent to the dependence of mental life upon the bodily instruments described. The distinctions within that physiology remain historical ones.

Sleep-language also has an entirely benign use. Conversation with friends is likened to sopor fessis in gramine, sleep on the grass for weary people. The surrounding comparisons are warming fire, summer shade, food and drink; the figure praises restoration, not pathological unconsciousness. Sopor is therefore not an automatic illness marker throughout the work. Its ordinary Latin use supplies an important contrast to its placement as a learned label in the medical catalogue.

In the religious polemic, “to be deplored Lethargy” helps blame credulous people for their susceptibility to manipulation. The continuation explains the failure as accepting religion without examination and being kept in ignorance. Burton’s disparagement of old people, women and the uneducated belongs to that polemic, not to an objective finding about those groups. The image here concerns a lack of critical alertness, not a diagnosis that every credulous person is asleep.

A later “lethargy, or … dream” describes professed Christians who remain morally untroubled while, in Burton’s judgment, moving towards damnation. He says they know there is a God and a judgment to come: the failure is not simply missing information but a felt absence of consequence. The seared conscience and being “past all feeling” deepen the image of inward insensibility. Unlike ordinary restorative sleep, this figurative sleep is dangerous precisely because the sleeper feels secure.

Related entries

Sleep and waking owns the broader regimen and ordinary sleep vocabulary; Stupid the family of insensibility and dulled apprehension. Cerebral chambers explains the anatomical framework. Compare Apoplexy (Apoplexy).

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Subsection 3. Classification of Diseases of the Head · paragraph 14; note 1476; note 1478The differentiated catalogue: Caro, nervous Stupor, Lethargie, Sopor and the coma compounds; the accompanying note explain the edition’s limits.
2. Member 5 Subsection 1 Immediate, Internal, Antecedent and Proximate Causes, and How the Body Acts Upon the Mind · paragraph 52Understanding and will dependent upon bodily senses. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
3. Member 5 Subsection 1 Immediate, Internal, Antecedent and Proximate Causes, and How the Body Acts Upon the Mind · paragraph 53Lethargies within Burton’s argument for the effects of humours.
4. Member 6 Subsection 1 Disturbances of the Mind Corrected Through the Sufferer’s Own Efforts in Resisting as Strongly as Possible and Confiding His Grief to a Friend and So Forth · paragraph 36Sopor as welcome sleep in a friendship comparison.
5. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 27The Latin homograph coma means hair in the Jason example. [Context, not a medical headword attestation.]
6. Subsection 5 The Last and Best Cure for Love Melancholy Is to Let Lovers Have Their Desire · paragraph 44; note 11297Coma as the woodland’s leafy hair, not the sleep label; the accompanying note records the printed grammar. [Context, not a medical headword attestation.]
7. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraph 26Lethargy as a polemical image of credulity.
8. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraph 27The continuation makes unexamined trust and maintained ignorance explicit. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
9. Member 2 Subsection 1 Religious Melancholy From Deficiency: Those Affected—Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, the Worldly and Complacent, Carnalists, All Impious People, Impenitent Sinners, and Others · paragraph 1Moral lethargy, dreaming and the seared conscience.
10. Member 2 Subsection 1 Religious Melancholy From Deficiency: Those Affected—Epicures, Atheists, Hypocrites, the Worldly and Complacent, Carnalists, All Impious People, Impenitent Sinners, and Others · paragraph 2Knowledge of judgment coexisting with complacency. [Context, not a headword attestation.]

In this edition

The two coma compounds are preserved rather than silently regularized into contemporary terminology. Equally important is an unrelated Latin homograph: coma means hair in the description of Jason, and foliage conceived as hair in the spring poem. Those are not attestations of pathological coma. The woodland line prints coma resolvit where the editor’s comparison has comam resolvit; the original reading remains visible. Finally, “stupor” in the modern rendering of the religious lethargy is an English explanatory choice, not proof that Burton uses his anatomical Stupor as the theological headword.

Caro

A historical label for profound stupor.

Original wording: “as Caro, Vertigo, Incubus, Apoplexie, Falling sickness”

Modern wording: “such as profound stupor, vertigo, nightmare oppression, apoplexy and the falling sickness”

Caro corresponds to profound stupor, the first item in the modern sequence. Its position is among ventricular and related disorders, not among the later conditions assigned to the brain’s substance. Lookup: caro; profound stupor.

Lethargie; Lethargies

Pathological sleep or stupor in the historical disease vocabulary.

Original wording: “Frensie, Lethargie, Melancholy”

Modern wording: “frenzy, lethargy, melancholy”

Lethargie is one disorder in the brain-substance list. The plural later appears in Burton’s explanation of the effects of humours and spirits, without being collapsed into apoplexy or madness. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: lethargie; lethargies; lethargy [bodily].

Sopor [medical label]

Heavy sleep or stupor, named among the affections of the brain’s substance.

Original wording: “Sopor, or Coma Vigilia & vigil Coma”

Modern wording: “sopor, coma vigilia and vigil coma”

The modern column keeps the learned label. The neighbouring or does not supply a clinical differentiation of the following compounds; the edition’s note explains only the broad sleep-and-waking field. Lookup: sopor [medical].

Coma Vigilia & vigil Coma

Printed historical labels for disturbed states of sleeping and waking.

Original wording: “Coma Vigilia & vigil Coma”

Modern wording: “coma vigilia and vigil coma”

The record preserves both word orders and their common position in the catalogue. Burton gives no further differentiation here, so this entry does not invent two precise syndromes or equate either automatically with present-day coma. Lookup: coma vigilia; vigil coma; coma [sleep-and-waking label].

sopor fessis in gramine

Sleep on the grass for the weary.

Original wording: “quale sopor fessis in gramine”

Modern wording: “like sleep on the grass to the weary”

This is an ordinary, restorative sleep image used to praise friendship. The comparison includes weary sleepers, not patients diagnosed with the earlier medical Sopor. Lookup: sopor [ordinary sleep]; fessis; in gramine.

Lethargy; lethargy [moral]

A figurative state of unalert, unfeeling or complacent inward life.

Original wording: “go to Hel in a lethargy, or in a dream”

Modern wording: “go to hell in a stupor or a dream”

The charge concerns people whom Burton says know of judgment yet feel no effective scruple. The earlier polemic uses the same family for unexamining credulity, rather than for a bodily diagnosis. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: lethargy [moral]; spiritual stupor.

coma [Latin hair]

Hair; by poetic extension, leafy foliage.

Original wording: “Iasonis flava coma incendit cor Medeæ”

Modern wording: “Jason’s golden hair set Medea’s heart on fire”

This Latin noun is a homograph of the sleep label, not another medical occurrence. The spring poem transfers hair to a woodland’s foliage; its printed coma rather than comam is preserved and discussed in the accompanying note. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: coma [hair]; flava coma; coma resolvit; comam resolvit [editorial comparison].