Hypochondria

From the book

The Anatomy of Melancholy

Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordHypocondries are the upper abdominal regions beneath the ribs.
In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe frontispiece’s hypochondriacal figure leans on his arm, afflicted by wind and pain, with medicine pots beside him and Saturn’s aspects above.
In this edition“Hypocondries” becomes either “hypochondria” or the explanatory “regions beneath the ribs.”
A place to readthe labelled sufferer, wind, pain, medicine and Saturn

Meaning

Hypocondries are the upper abdominal regions beneath the ribs. Burton’s singular Hypocondrie can specify the right or left region. Hypocondriacall, with spelling variants, describes a historical kind of melancholy attributed to abdominal causes and associated especially with wind. The Latin Hypocondriacus names a person suffering from that kind; Hypocondriaci is a plural form. These terms retain a bodily and classificatory force. They do not automatically mean modern anxiety about health.

Use in the book

The frontispiece’s hypochondriacal figure leans on his arm, afflicted by wind and pain, with medicine pots beside him and Saturn’s aspects above. It joins bodily distress, medical treatment and the astrological explanation represented in the picture. The address to the reader makes splenic hypochondriacal wind a conspicuous instance of melancholy’s supposed prevalence. The numerical claim that scarcely one in a thousand escapes the disease belongs to the reported contemporary rhetoric, not to a measured rate.

The anatomy digression gives the term its spatial basis. Its upper abdominal region contains the liver on the right and the spleen on the left; Burton explicitly derives the disease name from that region. The later threefold division distinguishes melancholy originating in the brain, in the whole body’s constitution, and in abdominal organs. The third is called hypochondriacal or windy. In its causes subsection, Burton equates it with the form called myrachial by the Arab physicians. His judgment that it is the most distressing and frequent coexists with Bruel’s and Laurentius’s view that it is least dangerous and easier to recognize or cure. Distress, frequency, danger and treatability are different comparisons, so one should not flatten them into a single ranking.

Laurentius subdivides the abdominal kind into hepatic, splenic and mesenteric forms, according to the organ assigned the principal fault. Burton’s causes include obstructed passages and discharges, competing hot- and cold-liver explanations, and external conditions such as diet, care and grief. The region is therefore a point within a disputed causal system, rather than a single agreed diseased organ.

The causal traffic runs in both directions. Giving way to passion can leave the hypochondria “misaffected”; in the dedicated causes discussion, fear, grief or sudden mental disturbance commonly begins the disorder, especially in an ill-disposed body. Randolotius’s reported attack follows an unspecified disturbing incident while copying a physician’s notes. Conversely, thick vapours are said to rise from abdominal disorder towards the heart and brain, clouding imagination. In the sorrow passage, the English body calls the resulting troubles “hypochondriacall convulsions,” while its Latin margin says hypochondriacal wind. These formulations remain distinct.

The classification repeatedly encounters diagnostic uncertainty. One consultation produces agreement between two physicians on hypochondriacal melancholy but a third’s conclusion that the illness is asthma. Later, Burton qualifies a proposed distinction for head melancholy: blood and hypochondria can be affected even when the head is chiefly involved. Wind occurs in all three species, although the hypochondriacal form is said to be windier. The criterion becomes the relative prominence of signs, not their absolute presence or absence.

The dedicated symptom account opens with disagreement over whether the womb, heart or stomach is chiefly affected. Only after that warning does it list regional signs. A liver origin is associated with pain on the right; a splenic origin with pain and hardness on the left, rumbling, strong appetite and weak digestion. If the source is assigned to the hypochondria themselves, the catalogue names rumbling swelling, impaired digestion and frequent belching. These are conditional attributions, not a secure diagnostic test furnished to the reader. Burton also reports intervals of relief, strong sexual desire supposedly caused by wind, and a benefit from intercourse in many patients according to Rhasis. The margin makes the proposed relation between abdominal wind, desire and relief particularly explicit. It remains historical causal reasoning rather than a modern sexual or medical recommendation.

The symptom account can include mistaken beliefs about bodily contents. In Platerus’s transmitted story, a man becomes convinced that living frogs inhabit his belly; Platerus attributes the sensations to wind, and the man resists a proposed deception. Eventual cure is reported without saying how it occurred. The separate discussion of melancholy in women also uses the anatomical noun for pain beneath the ribs, alongside anguish and difficulty describing what hurts. Its “without an evident cause” does not call the suffering unreal, and use of this regional noun does not turn every such passage into the hypochondriacal species.

The prognostic disagreement is sharper in the margin: a quotation attached to the account of chronic melancholy singles out the hypochondriacal form as especially prolonged, obstinate and difficult to cure. This stands beside Bruel’s less-dangerous ranking, without cancelling the distinct question of how readily any established illness can be removed. Later, in the discussion of predisposition to love, “many” judge sufferers from windy or hypochondriacal melancholy particularly susceptible. That opinion is set beside Ficino’s different claim about naturally melancholic constitutions.

Treatment shows that the word still names a bodily place as well as a disease. Attention is directed to the liver, spleen, stomach and hypochondria alongside the heart and brain. Warm applications and cupping glasses are applied to the regions beneath the ribs. The act of placing a treatment there cannot be translated as treating a patient’s worries about illness. The apparent ease of some reported remedies also does not erase the conflicting prognosis preserved elsewhere.

The same treatment discussion insists on limits. Regulation of the six non-natural things comes first; bloodletting is conditional, and forceful purging can aggravate the stomach. After two reports of success with the same remedies, Burton warns that the same treatment might have poisoned a third person by overheating liver and blood. The intervening discussion openly opposes advice about hot and cold medicines, says that suitability varies with the person, and reports Montanus’s warning against medicine without great need. Bruel likewise cautions that an attempt to dispel wind may inflame the blood and increase the disease; the margin extends that warning to food as well as medicine. Earlier, a reported aphrodisiac given by an unskilful physician causes the disorder. These qualifications prevent a series of successful anecdotes from becoming a universal therapeutic rule.

Related entries

Melancholy; Spleen; Myrach; Meseraic; Bowels; Consent and essence; Vapours; Spirits; Lucid intervals; Matrix and mother (future entry outside Batch 1)

Places to read

Explanation of the frontispiece, unnumbered preliminary matterthe labelled sufferer, wind, pain, medicine and Saturn
Democritus Junior to the Readersplenic hypochondriacal wind in the claim of prevalence
First Partition, passing states and settled diseasepassion affecting the hypochondria, with individual resistance and idleness qualifications
First Partition, anatomyregions beneath the ribs, the derivation of the disease name and the liver in the right Hypocondry
First Partition, kinds of melancholythree principal forms and conflicting diagnoses, including asthma
First Partition, sorrow as a cause, repeated []body convulsions versus marginal hypochondriacal wind
First Partition, inward causescompeting localizations, hot and cold liver accounts, emotional triggers, harmful medicine and differing judgments of the abdominal form
First Partition, recurring thoughtsthe Latin patient label in a consultation title
First Partition, symptomsmixed species, uncertainty, conditional symptoms, vapours, the frog belief, intervals and the wind-based sexual explanation
First Partition, melancholy in womenregional pain, episodic distress, and the difficulty of describing suffering
First Partition, prognosischronicity, the specifically hypochondriacal counterpoint, and Bruel’s different ranking
Second Partition, evacuationa patient label and attributed bowel regimen
Second Partition, bathsvariant disease names amid competing reasons for heating, drying and cleansing
Second Partition, medicinal plantsthe Hypocondriake spelling and attributed claims about wind and digestion
Second Partition, purgativesthe inflected adjective and Mattioli’s transmitted testimony
Second Partition, compound purgativespro Hypocondriaco in Montanus’s consultation reference
Second Partition, cauteriesabbreviated hypocond. and the right-hip location
Second Partition, treatment of hypochondriacal melancholybodily targets, conditional bloodletting, patient-dependent benefit or harm, disputed hot/cold medicines and external applications
Third Partition, predisposition to lovethe opinion concerning windy melancholy beside Ficino’s account of natural constitution
Alphabetical Table, unnumbereddivergent printed cure locators retained as Table evidence rather than used to displace verified source routes

In this edition

“Hypocondries” becomes either “hypochondria” or the explanatory “regions beneath the ribs.” The singular expressions “right Hypocondrie” and “left Hypocondrie” become “right hypochondrium” and “left hypochondrium.” The side belongs to the bodily region: the later “on the other side” in the same symptom paragraph means “on the other hand” and contrasts appetite patterns.

“Hypocondriacal winde” becomes “hypochondriacal wind” in the preliminary prevalence passage. The frontispiece’s “Hypocondriacus” becomes “The sufferer from hypochondriac melancholy.” The English supplies the explanatory noun and disease wording needed to unpack the Latin patient label. “Hypocondriacall or flatuous Melancholy” becomes “Hypochondriacal, or flatulent, melancholy”; retaining the classification does not convert it into a current diagnosis. In the margin, the plural patient noun and the plural anatomical noun remain distinct: Hypocondriaci names sufferers, while hypocondriis locates the supposed accumulation of wind.

The source also has the singular spelling “Hypocondry,” the variants “hypocondrical,” “Hypocondriall” and “Hypocondriake,” and abbreviated Latin forms. The register keeps their exact wording. “Passion” or “passions” in the bath cases means illness or complaints; Hypocondriaco and Hypocondriacos name patients in different Latin cases. The Table’s cure references differ from the treatment’s actual location; the reading routes here follow the passages themselves.

ab hypocondriis

Printed “ab hypocondriis” (Latin; phrase).

Citation key, Printed form, Original wording: ab hypocondriis

From the hypochondria, the upper abdominal regions; ab marks source or origin.

Context: The Gordonius-associated marginal account makes this one possible source of melancholy’s bodily material, without exclusive localization.

Source: Burton note original

Source wording: ab hypocondriis, myrache, splene

Modern rendering: from the hypochondria

At a Glance

Meaning

Use in the book

Places to read

In this edition

ab hypocondriis

hypoc.

hypochondriacall convulsions

hypochondriacos flatus

Hypocon.

hypocond.

Hypocondriaca melancholia

Hypocondriacal Melancholy

hypocondriacal melancholy

Hypocondriacal winde

hypocondriacall fit

Hypocondriacall German Prince

Hypocondriacall melancholy

Hypocondriacall or flatuous Melancholy

hypocondriacall symptomes

Hypocondriaci

Hypocondriacus

hypocondriacus · Hypocondriaco

hypocondriacus · hypocondriaco

hypocondriacus · Hypocondriacas

hypocondriacus · Hypocondriacos

Hypocondriake melancholy

Hypocondriall passions

hypocondrical passion

hypocondries · local use 1

Hypocondries · local use 1

hypocondries · local use 2

Hypocondries · local use 2

Hypocondries · local use 3

Hypocondries misaffected

hypocondrium · hypocondrii

hypocondrium · hypocondriis

left Hypocondrie

right Hypocondrie

right Hypocondry