Inveterate

Use in the book

The comparison borrowed from Seneca shows the process. One flow of rheum, not yet habitual, makes a cough; one that is “continual and inveterate” is said to cause consumption of the lungs. Repeated provocations of melancholy work analogously. The continuation makes the result vary with the humour’s intensity and the body’s or rational soul’s capacity to resist: establishment is a process mediated by susceptibility, not an automatic consequence of one feeling. The margin’s corresponding words are “assidua & violenta,” persistent and violent; the English inveterate introduces long establishment where the Latin supplies force.

In the argument about mental faculties, time can widen the alleged impairment. Burton sides with Bottonus in placing the first disorder in imagination and the subsequent disorder in reason if the disease has become established, according to its duration. Hildesheim’s margin likewise says “sometimes” the rational faculty too, “if” the disorder is long established. The conditional wording matters. Elsewhere, symptoms become more evident if the illness is “inveterate or violent,” and the love section repeats the distinction between violence and establishment. The disjunction itself shows that inveterate does not just mean violent.

A familiar prognostic axiom declares established melancholy incurable, then immediately admits the milder formulation “hardly cured.” Burton cites Galen for obstinacy after habituation, and contrasts this with Paracelsus’s claim that all diseases can be cured, noting an inconsistency concerning hereditary disease. These are reported, disputed judgments. The opening of the cure partition explicitly resists despair: long-established melancholy may often be helped, even when violent, or at least moderated and eased, according to Montanus. The progression from absolute axiom to difficulty, help and mitigation prevents incurable from becoming the definition of inveterate.

Nor does established necessarily mean unremitting. In the uterine account, an inveterate malady is more frequent, vehement and continuous than the episodes described just before it. But the later consolatory passage says that even an inveterate or habitual disease has intervals, sometimes well and sometimes ill; only an alternative branch of the sentence considers a more continuous form. The terms mark tendencies in particular accounts rather than a universally uninterrupted course.

Entrenchment also limits a proposed remedy’s scope. After the report of a Venetian immediately relieved by news of his son’s birth, Alexander’s conclusion allows this method where the imaginings have not become inveterate, especially where they supplied the original occasion of the disorder. The negative condition cannot be dropped to make the anecdote promise universal relief. At the other extreme, the discussion of white hellebore reserves a forceful emetic for desperate, established cases in which other remedies fail. Its margins add continuing bodily strength and exclude those at risk of fainting. Inveterate marks a difficult treatment situation; it does not cancel those cautions.

Beyond medicine, the word family exposes what time makes habitual or respectable. Hatred is defined as inveterate anger: persistence distinguishes the settled passion from a passing outburst. In the satire on inherited gentility, wealth becomes “ancient” through generations, but the age of its possession cannot cleanse the alleged methods by which it was acquired. The Latin “inveteratæ divitiæ” thus carries long standing, not a medical diagnosis or an intrinsic synonym for wickedness. Burton attributes the definition of gentility to Jerome; the editor leaves its exact source unidentified.

Related entries

Habit and disposition owns the settled-versus-passing distinction; Prognostics and Cure distinguish prediction, treatment and relief. Anger, especially inveterate anger, retains “inveterate anger”; Envy, malice and hatred develops the classification of passions. See Fits and paroxysms (Fits and paroxysms), Lucid intervals and Consumption and phthisis (Consumption and phthisis) for the other sides of the comparisons.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Subsection 5. Melancholy as a Passing State, Loosely So Called; the Different Meanings of the Word · paragraph 15Repeated provocations and the long-standing discharge analogy.
2. Subsection 8. The Moving Faculty · paragraph 29Inveterate anger in the definition of hatred; earlier ownership retained.
3. Subsection 2. The Part Affected The Faculty Affected and the People Affected · paragraph 22Duration as a condition of impairment spreading to reason.
4. Subsection 3 Particular Symptoms From the Influence of Stars, Parts of the Body and Humours · paragraph 18Long establishment distinguished from violence by or.
5. Subsection 4 Symptoms of Melancholy in Unmarried Women, Nuns and Widows · paragraph 3Established illness contrasted with intermittent relief.
6. Section 4 Member 1 Prognosis of Melancholy · paragraph 9The incurability axiom, its softening and conflicting authorities.
7. The Second Partition. The Cure of Melancholy. Section 1. Member 1. Subsection 1. Unlawful Cures Rejected · paragraph 34The cure partition permits help or mitigation in established cases.
8. Subsection 2 Help From Friends Through Counsel and Comfort Gentle and Harsh Methods Ingenious Devices Reassurance Changes in the Way of Life and Removal of Troubling Objects and So Forth · paragraph 7The explicitly negative condition on altering imaginings.
9. Member 2 Bodily Deformity, Sickness, Low Birth, and Particular Discontents · paragraph 29Long-established wealth in the satire of gentility.
10. Member 8 Against Melancholy Itself · paragraph 25Intervals remain possible even in established illness.
11. Member 2 Subsection 1 Single Substances That Purge Upwards · paragraph 38A desperate established case, with stronger cautions in the margins.
12. Subsection 2 How Love Tyrannizes Over Human Beings. Love, or Heroical Melancholy: Its Definition and the Part Affected · paragraph 63The same violence-or-establishment distinction in love melancholy.

In this edition

“Long-established,” “long-standing,” “deeply rooted” and, in the Latin axiom, “chronic” are local renderings. No single replacement conveys all the argumentative qualifications. The modern column silently repairs the obvious sense of the printed “of it be inveterate” to “if”; the editor discloses that correction. Inveteratus is a printed inflection in Hildesheim’s margin, inveterata agrees with melancholia, and inveteratæ with divitiæ. The dictionary access form inveteratus does not authorize replacing these distinct printed forms. The English “inveterate anger” retains its earlier lexical owner rather than being counted again.

inveterate [illness]

Long-standing or established through duration.

Original wording: “If it be inveterate or violent”

Modern wording: “If it is long-established or violent”

Or distinguishes establishment from intensity. Later passages permit relief, lucid intervals and mitigation, so neither constant symptoms nor incurability belongs to the word’s bare meaning. Further checked occurrences: the passage; the passage; the passage; the passage; the passage. Lookup: inveterate; long-established.

inveteratus

Long established; an inflected Latin adjective qualifying the disorder.

Original wording: “Quandoq; etiam Rationalis si affectus inveteratus sit”

Note translation: “sometimes the rational faculty too, if the disorder is long established”

The short marginal sentence preserves both sometimes and if. It makes involvement of the rational faculty conditional, not a necessary feature of every passing disturbance. Lookup: inveteratus; affectus inveteratus; inveteratus [Latin dictionary access form].

Inveterata melancholia incurabilis

Long-established melancholy is incurable, a quoted prognostic axiom.

Original wording: “Inveterata melancholia incurabilis”

Modern wording: “Chronic melancholy is incurable”

Inveterata contributes chronic or long-established; incurabilis supplies the separate claim of incurability. Burton immediately gives the less absolute alternative difficult to cure and later permits help and easing. Lookup: Inveterata; Inveterata melancholia incurabilis; inveterate melancholy.

imaginations be not inveterate

Disturbing imaginings have not become deeply rooted.

Original wording: “If our imaginations be not inveterate”

Modern wording: “if our disordered imaginings have not become deeply rooted”

The negative condition limits Alexander’s conclusion about the proposed method. The following especially clause gives greatest relevance where the illness arose from those imaginings. Lookup: inveterate imaginings; not inveterate; imaginations be not inveterate.

inveteratæ divitiæ

Riches long established through possession over time.

Original wording: “Opes antiquæ, inveteratæ divitiæ”

Modern wording: “old possessions, long-established riches”

The second Latin phrase corresponds to long-established riches, not to the whole paired translation. Burton uses the age of wealth to deflate inherited gentility; the Jerome attribution remains unverified in the edition. Lookup: inveteratæ; inveteratæ divitiæ; long-established riches.