Green sickness

Use in the book

The relevant sentence belongs to the bodily symptoms of love melancholy. After the quoted lover’s neglect of food and health, Burton names Jason Pratensis as the authority for a causal chain: distraction of the spirits prevents the liver from turning nourishment into blood; the bodily members consequently lack sustenance, become weak, and waste away. Green sickness then appears as a frequent consequence in young women, alongside cachexia in men. The word “often” limits the claim. This is the explanatory physiology of the passage, not advice about a modern patient.

The garden comparison makes the imagined process visible. Limbs wither like herbs deprived of rain in May. The first-person garden belongs to the Pratensis material transmitted by Burton: the Latin quotation in Burton’s note likewise speaks of “horto meo,” “my garden.” It should therefore not be made, without qualification, into an observation of Burton’s own garden. The analogy concerns the lack of nourishing supply, not a botanical identification of the disease. The following still-and-tears comparison changes the image from wasting to visible emotional discharge.

This article selects the narrow green-sickness passage and its explanatory comparison. Other occurrences of cachexia in the work belong to wider lists of bodily disorders; they do not enlarge the source’s green-sickness account into a general history of chlorosis.

Related entries

Matrix and mother: The womb and the historical disorder called the mother.

Humoral qualities: The older physiological qualities that frame bodily explanation.

Heroical love: The broader account of love melancholy.

Blood and sanguine: Blood and its physiological functions.

Places to read

1. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 29Neglect of food and health supplies the immediate symptom context.
2. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 30The named condition, its comparison with cachexia, and Pratensis’s blood-making explanation; Burton note 9764 preserves the garden simile in Latin, while editor note 9765 supplies the chlorosis identification.
3. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 31The following liquid-from-a-still verse begins a different comparison.
4. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind Good and Bad Signs and So Forth · paragraph 32The still image is applied to a lover’s tears.

In this edition

The pair “green sickness” → “green sickness” preserves the historical name. “a Cacexia or an evil habit to men” becomes “and men cachexia, or a poor bodily condition”: the modern phrase makes the coordination explicit and replaces the misleading everyday sense of habit with bodily condition. The liver clause is likewise kept as an attributed historical account. The editor’s identification “chlorosis” belongs to note, not to Burton’s original sentence. The source’s sole retained green-sickness context does not establish an equivalence with any one modern diagnosis.

Cachexia and evil habit

Printed “Cacexia” (English; family).

A poor or disordered condition of the body; evil habit is a bodily state, not a habitual action.

Here: The male counterpart in this local comparison is a broadly impaired bodily condition.

Context: Burton coordinates the men’s condition with the women’s, without identifying the two names as one disease.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a Cacexia or an evil habit to men

Modern rendering: and men cachexia, or a poor bodily condition

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Alignment qualification: The modern and supplies the coordination already carried by the original comma; the omitted occurrence of happeneth is understood in both clauses.

Further local use

Printed “evil habit” (English; phrase).

Citation key: Evil habit.

Here: Evil means poor or disordered; habit means condition or constitution, as Burton’s alternative gloss of Cacexia.

Context: Burton’s explanation concerns the men’s bodily state in the gendered comparison, not their conduct.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: a Cacexia or an evil habit to men

Modern rendering: and men cachexia, or a poor bodily condition

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Alignment qualification: The modern and supplies the coordination carried by the original comma; the full equivalent poor bodily condition translates evil habit, not Cacexia alone.

Chlorosis

Printed “chlorosis” (English; lemma).

The historical disease-name supplied by this edition’s editor as an identification of green sickness.

Here: An editorial explanatory name, absent from Burton’s original body here.

Context: This is the supplied editor’s identification in the accompanying note, not a word used or a diagnosis made by Burton in this passage.

Source: editorial note

Source and modern wording: Green sickness is the historical diagnosis chlorosis

Alignment scope: Identity transcription of the same editorial English note; no Burton-language counterpart is asserted

Word and construction: An identity transcription of the editor’s English explanation, not an original-to-modern translation.

Modern container: note

Translation layer: Editorial explanation only; chlorosis is not Burton’s original wording at this source unit.

green sickness

Printed “green sickness” (English; lemma).

A historical disease-name associated here with young women’s weakness and wasting.

Here: The name marks the female side of the passage’s gendered account of impaired nourishment.

Context: Burton follows the physiological explanation attributed to Jason Pratensis with an inference qualified by often; he does not say every young woman is affected.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: The green sickness therefore often happeneth to yong women

Modern rendering: Thus young women often develop the green sickness

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.

Hortus

Printed “horto meo” (Latin; lemma).

Horto is the ablative of hortus, garden; meo means my.

Here: Pratensis’s first-person garden supplies the comparison for wasting from inadequate nourishment.

Context: The phrase is in Burton’s marginal quotation of Pratensis; it is not independently Burton’s autobiographical assertion.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: herbæ in horto meo hoc mense Maio zeriscæ, ob imbrium defectum

Modern rendering: herbs in my garden do this May for lack of rain

Alignment scope: Corresponding garden-simile portions across the original marginal quotation and paired modern body; the modern paraphrase does not translate every Latin word separately

Word and construction: The indexed horto meo contributes in my garden within the larger simile.

Alignment qualification: This aligns the garden portion of Burton’s Latin note with the corresponding English paraphrase in the paired modern body. The printed zeriscæ is unusual; the edition interprets it contextually rather than claiming independent collation.

Liver and blood-making

Printed “Liver” (English; family).

The bodily organ to which this historical physiology assigns conversion of nourishment into blood.

Here: The failure of blood-making supplies the proposed intermediate cause of weakness and wasting.

Context: Jason Pratensis is named as the authority; Burton presents this as his explanation of symptoms, not a present-day physiological account.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: the Liver doth not perform his part, nor turns the aliment into blood as it ought

Modern rendering: the liver fails to do its work and does not turn food into blood as it should

Alignment scope: Equal-scope phrase/construction in the paired body texts

Word and construction: The indexed form contributes the defined sense to this complete aligned unit.