From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordCough names a bodily symptom but can also be an intentional noise used to attract notice.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyA cough helps explain how a passing disturbance becomes an established illness.
- In this editionThin spittle becomes thin saliva in the physiological account; spettle remains spittle in the anti-erotic inventory.
- A place to readCough in Seneca’s analogy between occasional and settled disturbances.
Meaning
Cough names a bodily symptom but can also be an intentional noise used to attract notice. Spittle, spitle and spettle name saliva; spit and spitting name its expulsion or a socially directed act. The institutional Spittle, a hospital or shelter, is a different word already owned by Hospital. Burton's contexts make the difference between bodily material, bodily act and perceived message especially important.
Use in the book
A cough helps explain how a passing disturbance becomes an established illness. Following Seneca, Burton compares neglected emotional disturbances with a single discharge producing a cough and persistent discharge producing consumption of the lungs. The analogy turns on repetition and duration, not on a declaration that every cough must lead to wasting disease. Distillation and rheum retains the proposed fluid mechanism; Lights retains the organ.
Saliva need not be pathological. In the anatomy of taste it is the thin watery medium through which flavours are perceived. Spitting then appears among the body's expulsive actions alongside sweating and vomiting, while symptom catalogues describe excessive or frequent spitting in particular conditions. The same material can therefore serve normal sensory function, be expelled and figure among symptoms, without becoming a different substance each time.
The satire of the old would-be lover sets persistent cough beside failing sight and hearing, then says his moisture has dried up so that he cannot spit. These signs are assembled to expose, in Burton's judgement, the incongruity of his pursuit of young women; they are not a neutral clinical description of everyone in old age. Another anti-erotic passage, introduced through Chrysostom, places spettle among bodily matter imagined beneath attractive appearances. Its disgust is a rhetorical strategy, not the lexical definition of saliva.
Coughing and spitting can acquire social meaning, but who assigns the meaning matters. In the suspicion passage, the sufferer cannot bear another person's cough or spit because he thinks it is aimed at shaming him. Burton's next unit calls the resulting conception of abuse false. In Aretino's Lucretia's speech, by contrast, admirers deliberately clear their throats or cough outside her house so that she will look out. One is attributed hostile intention; the other is an explicitly intended signal within a literary speaker's boast.
A further case contains the actual hostile gesture: the sufferer who insists that he sees devils spits in the physician's face. The first-person face is Foreest's in quoted testimony, not Burton's. The example supplies no reason to read all earlier spitting as aggression. These separate settings make the family useful for reading agency as well as bodily signs.
Related entries
- Lights: lungs and respiratory anatomy.
- Distillation and rheum: rheum and the historical flow explanation.
- Hospital: Spittle as an institution, not saliva.
- Courtship and wooing: courtship signs and intended attention.
Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.
Places to read
- Subsection 5. Melancholy as a Passing State, Loosely So Called; the Different Meanings of the Word · paragraph 15Cough in Seneca’s analogy between occasional and settled disturbances.
- Subsection 5. The Soul and Its Faculties · paragraph 30Spitting among expulsive bodily actions.
- Subsection 6. The Sensitive Soul · paragraph 14Saliva as the medium of taste.
- Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraph 16A cough or spit interpreted as directed contempt.
- Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraph 17The following description calls the imagined abuse false.
- Subsection 3 Particular Symptoms From the Influence of Stars, Parts of the Body and Humours · paragraph 17A greater inclination to spit in the phlegmatic symptom account.
- Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 16Guianerius’s much spitting in a localized symptom list.
- Member 2. Lawful Cures, First From God · paragraph 4Spitle as saliva in a scriptural example, not the institution.
- Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable and Honourable · paragraph 16Institutional Spittle remains under Hospital.
- Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical Melancholy: Its Definition and the Part Affected · paragraph 44Persistent cough and inability to spit in a satire of elderly desire.
- Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 26Deliberate coughs attracting Lucretia’s attention.
- By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men and Women, the Miseries of Marriage, the Consequences of Lust, and So Forth · paragraph 49Spettle in anti-erotic bodily imagery.
- Causes of Despair: The Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Harsh Ministers, Misunderstanding Scripture, Guilty Consciences, and So On · paragraph 20Foreest introduces the minister’s reported condition.
- Causes of Despair: The Devil, Melancholy, Meditation, Distrust, Weakness of Faith, Harsh Ministers, Misunderstanding Scripture, Guilty Consciences, and So On · paragraph 21Spitting in Foreest’s face, within his quoted case.
In this edition
Thin spittle becomes thin saliva in the physiological account; spettle remains spittle in the anti-erotic inventory. “May not spit from him” is inability, rendered “cannot even spit,” not a prohibition. “Hem or cough” preserves two noises: hem becomes clearing the throat. Where Spittle is a charitable institution, the translation supplies “a shelter for the sick,” and lookup returns to Hospital rather than the saliva family.
a cough
A coughing symptom, here the result of a single catarrhal discharge in an analogy. The next clause changes duration and severity; the analogy does not make every cough consumption.
Original wording: “one Distillation, not yet grown to custome, makes a cough”
Modern wording: “a single catarrhal discharge, not yet habitual, produces a cough”
Lookup: cough; cough: symptom.
thin spittle
Thin saliva, serving as the medium of taste. The phrase describes normal sensory mediation rather than a disease or a hospital.
Original wording: “a thin spittle, or watery juice”
Modern wording: “thin saliva or a watery fluid”
Lookup: spittle; saliva; spitle.
spitting
Expulsion of material through the mouth. The list distinguishes the bodily acts while grouping them under expulsion; spitting is not another name for vomiting.
Original wording: “purging, vomiting, spitting, sweating”
Modern wording: “purging, vomiting, spitting, sweating”
Lookup: spitting: expulsion.
cough, or spit
Cough or spit as acts wrongly interpreted as insults in this context. The sufferer supplies the hostile interpretation; the text does not confirm that every noise is a deliberate slight.
Original wording: “cough, or spit, or make a noise sometimes”
Modern wording: “cough, spit or sometimes make any noise at all”
Lookup: cough: interpreted signal; spit: interpreted insult.
a continuate cough
A persistent cough. Continuate specifies duration within Burton’s satirical catalogue, not a separate kind of lung disease.
Original wording: “a continuate cough”
Modern wording: “a persistent cough”
Lookup: continuate cough.
may not spit from him
Is unable to spit. The preceding drying of moisture explains inability in Burton’s historical account; may not is not a command or permission rule.
Original wording: “may not spit from him”
Modern wording: “he cannot even spit”
Lookup: spit: inability.
hem or cough
Clear the throat or cough deliberately to draw attention. Lucretia says the purpose is to make her look from the window; the first-person account is a literary speech, not Burton’s observation.
Original wording: “sometimes hem or cough”
Modern wording: “would sometimes clear their throats or cough”
Lookup: hem; cough: courtship signal.
spettle
Saliva or spittle. The ordinary bodily substance is placed in demeaning imagery intended to counter attraction; the insult is contextual, not part of the noun’s meaning.
Original wording: “spettle in her mouth”
Modern wording: “spittle in her mouth”
Lookup: spettle; spittle: saliva.
spit in my face
Spit at the physician’s face as a hostile or contemptuous act. My belongs to Foreest’s quoted case; Burton then returns to third-person narration of the reported cure.
Original wording: “would spit in my face”
Modern wording: “He would spit in my face”
Lookup: spit: hostile gesture.