Contagion and infection

Use in the book

The anatomical and environmental cases begin with alteration of something, not necessarily passage from one infected person to another. In the definition of melancholy, the head's middle cell is the affected site. In the account of air, impure and foggy air enters through respiration, depresses the spirits and causes disease through “infection of the heart.” The descriptions of desirable air exclude decay and “contagious” smells; the contrast of Périgord with marshy districts connects alleged freedom from contagious disease with terrain and air. These are linked claims in historical environmental medicine, not an implicit account of microbes.

An account of agency is equally necessary. The “he” who can secretly produce sickness and health is the devil in the discussion immediately surrounding Tertullian and Taurellus. Hidden poisons allegedly infect bodies and obstruct internal functions. In the later religious polemic, the devil infects one person and makes him a principal agent, or affects whole cities and countries. In the first case bodily interference explains the injury; in the second the spreading corruption of superstition is the object. The verb's common shape does not make the claims or their evidential status identical.

The erotic account deliberately combines physiology and analogy. Varius says an exchange of looks infects the purer spirits through emitted rays. Burton then writes “as some think” and acknowledges the objection of those who hold that sight works by receiving something into the eye. Ficino's alleged transmission of inflamed eyes by sight is offered in support of the competing emission theory. The qualification and dispute must survive any summary: Burton has not shown that looking at a diseased eye transmits disease.

The direction of the imagined action is especially clear in the next stage. Beams travel from the active person's heart through the eyes, affect the other person's spirits, and the spirits infect the blood. “Agent” and “patient” here identify actor and recipient, not necessarily physician and medical patient. Apuleius's passionate speech supplies a literary image of eyes piercing to the inner body. Later Burton compares this rapid acquisition of love with plague, itching, scabs and flux “caught by infection.” That analogy is part of his case for visual transmission of passion; it is not proof that love and those diseases have the same physical cause.

Other figurative uses do not require the eye-ray mechanism. A beautiful person can infect “like a Basilisk,” in a cluster of mythical petrification, magnetic attraction and deadly gaze. A kiss is compared to a spider's venom; Ariosto's jealousy-wound infects soul and heart and overmasters reason. These comparisons concentrate the force of injury and involuntary capture. They do not make every occurrence of infect an assertion of ordinary contagious disease.

The literary criticism at the beginning supplies another independent sense. Books infect rather than perfect the reader, a Latin verbal contrast which Burton repeats in English. Tacitus's corrupted age similarly becomes an analogy for social flattery; elsewhere even the air is “in love,” after a Latin phrase saying it is infected with love. The family can therefore move between alleged material change, moral corruption and poetic personification. Against that mobility, “infected houses” in the catalogue of presumptuous faith is understood by the modern edition specifically as plague-infected houses. The account censures entering them as a hazardous display of confidence; it does not praise the act as a remedy.

Related entries

Fascination owns the larger account of bewitchment through the eyes; Spirits the subtle bodily medium; Air environmental causation; Love the broader erotic and non-erotic field. Compare Epidemical, which concerns prevalence, and Pestilence and plague.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 9Corrupting books and the infect/perfect wordplay.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 35An age tainted by flattery.
3. Member 3 Subsection 1. The Definition of Melancholy Its Name and Distinctions · paragraph 5Infection as impairment of the brain’s middle cell.
4. Subsection 2 A Digression on the Nature of Spirits Evil Angels or Devils and How They Cause Melancholy · paragraph 11The devil or spirits as the debated agents of illness.
5. Subsection 2 A Digression on the Nature of Spirits Evil Angels or Devils and How They Cause Melancholy · paragraph 12Secret bodily injury through alleged hidden poisons.
6. Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 18Latin tainting of blood within reported opinions about fruit.
7. Subsection 5 Bad Air as a Cause of Melancholy · paragraph 28Air harming spirits and heart.
8. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraph 20Contagious smells in the environmental account.
9. Member 3. Air Corrected. With a Digression on Air · paragraph 24Regional terrain and claimed freedom from contagious disease.
10. 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 6Fear tainting the heart in humoral physiology.
11. Member 7 Against Rejection, Abuse, Injuries, Contempt, Disgrace, Insults, Slander, Mockery and the Like · paragraph 41Contrast only: infectum means undone, not infected.
12. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 3Poetic air infected with love.
13. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 4A basilisk comparison within the power of beauty.
14. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 5An exchange of looks affecting the subtle spirits.
15. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 7The eye-ray claim and its acknowledged optical objection.
16. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 9The direction of action from one person’s heart to the other’s spirits and blood.
17. Member 2. Subsection 2. Other Causes of Love Melancholy: Sight; Beauty of the Face, Eyes and Other Parts; and How It Pierces Us · paragraph 16Love compared with disease caught through infection.
18. Persistence and Opportunity of Time and Place; Meetings, Conversation, Singing, Dancing, Music, Amorous Tales and Sights, Kissing, Familiarity, Tokens, Gifts, Bribes, Promises, Declarations, Tears, and So On · paragraph 27The poisonous-spider comparison for kissing.
19. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good Counsel; Disregarding It, Not Watching Women or Locking Them Up; Concealing It, and So On · paragraph 18A jealousy-wound infecting soul and heart in verse.
20. 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 41Context explicitly identifies the Devil acting through priests.
21. 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 1Context continues the demonic agency through the pronoun “he.”
22. 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 39Corruption spreading through an agent to a community.
23. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraph 20Plague-infected houses in a polemic against presumptuous faith.

In this edition

The modern column differentiates these forces: “impairment” for the brain cavity's infection, “taints” for fear's action on the heart, “poisoning” for the basilisk, and “corrupted” for the age's flattery. The fruit passage adds Latin “Sanguinem inficiunt,” “They taint the blood,” followed by Burton's own “infest” and putrefy: it reports restrictive dietary opinions, not present dietary guidance. The textual sequence does not make every possible taint a process of interpersonal transmission.

Apparatus also preserves a difference between languages: Varius's cited margin has “fascinantur,” are bewitched, where the body says “are infected.” Those expressions overlap in the account of fascination but are not identical dictionary definitions. Conversely, the consolation's “infectum non potest esse” is rendered “cannot be undone”: its resemblance to English infected is a false lead.

infection

Impairment or harmful corruption of a part.

Original wording: “a privation or infection of the middle cell of the Head”

Modern wording: “a loss of function or an impairment of the head’s middle cavity”

The two nouns mark loss or injury at a supposed anatomical seat of mental function. Infection here is not evidence of a transmissible organism.

Editorial access forms: infection of the brain. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

infection of the heart

Harmful alteration of the heart by impure air in the historical physiological account.

Original wording: “causeth Diseases by infection of the heart”

Modern wording: “causes disease by infecting the heart”

The stated route is respiration, with air depressing the spirits and harming the heart. It differs from a claim that a nearby person passes on an illness.

Editorial access forms: infecting the heart. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “Fear dissolves the spirits, infects the heart”.

contagion

Communication of a harmful condition between bodies, here through alleged eye-rays and vapours.

Original wording: “by the contagion, the spectators eys are infected”

Modern wording: “the observer’s eyes are infected by contagion”

The phrase belongs to Ficino’s example invoked in the visual theory of love. Burton acknowledges an optical objection, and the supposed ocular transmission is not an established finding.

Editorial access forms: contagious transmission. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

caught by infection

Acquired through the communication of disease, used as an analogy for love.

Original wording: “closely, and as suddainly are caught by infection”

Modern wording: “caught imperceptibly and just as suddenly through infection”

Closely means secretly or imperceptibly. The examples support an analogy about speed and hidden action; they do not establish one mechanism shared by every item.

Editorial access forms: closely caught. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

inficitur; infected

Is corrupted or made worse, here by reading.

Original wording: “quibus inficitur potius, quàm perficitur”

Modern wording: “by which one is infected rather than perfected”

The verbal play opposes harmful influence to improvement. Burton immediately repeats it in English, and the modern rendering explains the ethical/intellectual sense.

Editorial access forms: infecting books. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Further checked attestations: the passage: “by which he is rather infected than any way perfected”.

infecta

Corrupted or tainted, qualifying an age.

Original wording: “tempora infecta & adulatione sordida”

Modern wording: “an age corrupted and filthy with flattery”

The Latin form qualifies tempora; the second description relates its filth to flattery. The passage borrows Tacitus’s historical indictment for Burton’s social satire.

Editorial access forms: tainted age. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

Sanguinem inficiunt

They taint the blood.

Original wording: “Sanguinem inficiunt”

Modern wording: “They taint the blood”

The subject is the fruits under discussion, and blood is the object. This is a reported dietary explanation, not proof of contagion or a recommendation to avoid fruit.

Editorial access forms: inficiunt. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

infect thee like a Basilisk

Poison or harm the beholder like the legendary gaze-killing creature.

Original wording: “infect thee like a Basilisk”

Modern wording: “poisoning you like a basilisk”

The comparison belongs beside Medusa’s petrification and a magnet’s attraction. It intensifies beauty’s dangerous power through literary images.

Editorial access forms: basilisk infection. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

infected houses

Houses affected by plague, as specified in the modern rendering.

Original wording: “they will go into infected houses”

Modern wording: “they will enter plague-infected houses”

The plague specification is supplied by the modern column’s local interpretation. Burton includes the act in his criticism of presumptuous religious confidence.

Editorial access forms: plague-infected houses. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.

infectum (contrast)

Undone, in a statement that what is done cannot be reversed.

Original wording: “quod fit, infectum non potest esse”

Modern wording: “what has been done cannot be undone”

This is a comparison record, not a member of the tainting family in this use. The entire clause establishes the local force and prevents a false translation through English infection.

Editorial access forms: infectum; undone. These are lookup aids, not additional claims of printed attestation.