Plethora and repletion

Use in the book

Fernel’s catalogue places excess, corruption and wasting together among harmful consequences of eating. Plethora, cacochymia and cachexia therefore require separate glosses: quantity, quality and bodily condition are not one diagnosis. The lamp smothered by oil and the fire extinguished by excess wood explain the supposed obstruction of natural heat. This is the historical physiological argument, including its rhetorical expansion toward sudden death.

The account of excessive study makes the distinction concrete. Meditation draws spirits toward the head and leaves digestive organs unsupported; excessive sitting prevents surplus vapours from escaping. Cacexia belongs to the consequent list of wasting and digestive troubles. Later symptom catalogues acknowledge intermixture and variation, expressly refusing to combine every listed condition into one patient. The reported Paracelsian classification places cachexia under dropsy, but Burton calls the general promise of curing subordinate diseases through their principal class too sweeping. Love-melancholy supplies another account of failed nourishment; the liver mechanism and dry-garden comparison are Pratensis’s.

The dietary discussion warns against both too much food and complete fasting. Repletion and inanition may harm at opposite extremes, in an account that also preserves different physicians’ meal allowances for particular patients. Filling with food and fullness of veins give further Latin applications, while the claim about conception on a full stomach belongs to historical hereditary speculation. Cacochymia can also enter an objection to purging, but Burton’s reply limits the danger to mistimed or excessive use and maintains legitimate uses within his medicine. None of these passages supplies current dietary or procedural advice.

Ordinary Latin filling retains its own range. Ditches are filled with corpses in the reported siege narrative; human life is filled with miseries in a marginal lament; grand dinners are filled with strife in a dining-room inscription. These are spatial or moral applications of a filling verb, distinct from technical bodily repletion.

Related entries

Humour

Blood and sanguine

Excrements

Diet and regimen

Fasting

Oppilation

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 22–24Ditches filled with corpses provide a literal spatial use outside the medical technical vocabulary.
2. Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraphs 1–3Repletion refers to a full stomach before conception.
3. Subsection 2 the Quantity of Food as a Cause · paragraphs 3–7The catalogue places wasting alongside excessive fullness without treating them as synonyms. The margin specifies excessive filling with food as a cause of melancholy.
4. Subsection 10. Discontents, Cares, Miseries and the Like as Causes · paragraphs 13–15The phrase figuratively fills human life with bodily and mental miseries.
5. Subsection 15 Love of Learning or Excessive Study With a Digression on The… · paragraphs 25–27The adjective qualifies scholars in the marginal explanation involving weak digestion.
6. Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our… · paragraphs 27–29Wasting is one of the disorders intermingled with melancholy.
7. Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraphs 5–7Cachexia is placed under dropsy in the reported fourfold classification.
8. Subsection 2. Diet Corrected in Quantity · paragraphs 3–5Complete fasting is the opposed extreme that can also harm the patient.
9. Member 3 Against Poverty and Want and Other Such Adversities · paragraphs 44–46Sumptuous dinners are filled with strife, opposed to the little table’s peace.
10. Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraphs 26–28Bad humours are linked to weak digestion and the supposed depletion caused by purgatives.
11. Subsection 2 Bloodletting · paragraphs 25–27Fullness of the veins is one of several proposed signs of excessive blood.
12. Member 4 Subsection 1 Symptoms or Signs of Love Melancholy in Body and Mind… · paragraphs 29–31Poor bodily condition follows failure of nourishment in the love-melancholy explanation.

In this edition

“Cacochymia” → “corrupt humours”, “Plethora” → “an excess of humours”, and “Cachexia” → “a wasted constitution” occur together. “Cacexia” → “wasting ill health” makes the poorer bodily condition explicit. These choices distinguish excessive quantity, corrupted quality and wasted state without equating them with current diagnoses.

“repletion and inanition” → “overfilling and emptying the body” retains the opposition; emptying means depletion here, in the warning against complete fasting. The surrounding catalogue has another textual difficulty: the original prints cruelties, while the edition conjecturally renders undigested matter as if crudities were intended; Fernel’s passage remains uncollated. That uncertainty does not authorize silently changing the adjacent checked medical terms.

cachecticus

Printed “Cacectici” (Latin; lemma).

Cachectic: in a poor or wasted bodily condition.

Here: The adjective qualifies scholars in the marginal explanation involving weak digestion.

Context: The margin attributes the judgment to Vossius; its generalized claim belongs to historical physiology.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: Studiosi sunt Cacectici & nunquam bene colorati

Modern rendering: Scholars are cachectic and never of good colour

Modern container: note

Alignment scope: Original Latin marginal phrase and its supplied note translation

Word and construction: The indexed Latin form supplies the filling, depletion or bodily-condition meaning explained here within the full phrase.

cachexia

Printed “Cachexia” (English; lemma).

A poor, disordered or wasted bodily condition.

Here: The catalogue places wasting alongside excessive fullness without treating them as synonyms.

Context: Burton attributes the catalogue to Fernel; these historical humoral categories are not exact modern diagnoses.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cachexia

Modern rendering: a wasted constitution

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Cacexia” (English; lemma).

Here: Wasting ill health accompanies impaired digestion and excessive sitting in the account of scholars.

Context: Burton collects physicians’ explanations of the harm of immoderate study.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cacexia

Modern rendering: wasting ill health

Sense relation: The same poor bodily condition, with its distinct cause, classification or accompanying conditions retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Cacexia” (English; lemma).

Here: Wasting is one of the disorders intermingled with melancholy.

Context: Burton immediately warns that all listed symptoms do not occur in one person, and that they vary over time.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cacexia

Modern rendering: a wasted bodily condition

Sense relation: The same poor bodily condition, with its distinct cause, classification or accompanying conditions retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Cachexia” (English; lemma).

Here: Cachexia is placed under dropsy in the reported fourfold classification.

Context: Burton reports Paracelsus and followers; the continuation calls the inference of common cures too general and disputed.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cachexia

Modern rendering: bodily wasting

Sense relation: The same poor bodily condition, with its distinct cause, classification or accompanying conditions retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Cacexia” (English; lemma).

Here: Poor bodily condition follows failure of nourishment in the love-melancholy explanation.

Context: Jason Pratensis supplies the liver-and-spirits mechanism and the garden comparison; habit here means bodily condition.

Source: original body

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

Modern rendering: cachexia, or a poor bodily condition

Sense relation: The same poor bodily condition, with its distinct cause, classification or accompanying conditions retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

cacochymia

Printed “Cacochymia” (English; lemma).

A bad mixture or condition of the bodily humours.

Here: Corrupted humours are named among the consequences of excessive or ill-assorted eating.

Context: Burton attributes the catalogue to Fernel; these historical humoral categories are not exact modern diagnoses.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Cacochymia

Modern rendering: corrupt humours

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Cacochymia” (English; lemma).

Here: Bad humours are linked to weak digestion and the supposed depletion caused by purgatives.

Context: Ayrer’s caution is followed by Burton’s qualification: purges used at the wrong time or excessively are meant, while proper uses remain valuable.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: that Cacochymia, which Celsus and others observe, or ill digestion, and bad juyce through all the parts of it

Modern rendering: the cacochymia observed by Celsus and others—that is, poor digestion and bad humours throughout the body

Sense relation: The same bad-humour condition, now in an argument about mistimed or excessive purging.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

inanition

Printed “inanition” (English; lemma).

Emptying or depletion of the body.

Here: Complete fasting is the opposed extreme that can also harm the patient.

Context: Burton cites Celsus and Iacchinus after differing prescriptions for particular patients; the claim is that both extremes may harm.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: repletion and inanition

Modern rendering: overfilling and emptying the body

Word and construction: Inanition supplies emptying the body, understood as depletion; repletion supplies the opposed overfilling.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

plethora

Printed “Plethora” (English; lemma).

Excessive bodily fullness, understood here as an excess of humours.

Here: Quantity is distinguished from corrupted quality and wasted condition.

Context: Burton attributes the catalogue to Fernel; these historical humoral categories are not exact modern diagnoses.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Plethora

Modern rendering: an excess of humours

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

repleo

Printed “repletæ” (Latin; lemma).

Filled; the participial form of to fill.

Here: Ditches filled with corpses provide a literal spatial use outside the medical technical vocabulary.

Context: Burton reports the scale of siege casualties amid bitter irony about heroic glory; no independent measurement is established.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: fossæ urbis cadaveribus repletæ sunt

Modern rendering: the city’s ditches were filled with corpses

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “repletur” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: repleo.

Here: The phrase figuratively fills human life with bodily and mental miseries.

Context: The margin elaborates the body’s generalized lament; the exact Bernard passage remains unidentified.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: Multis repletur homo miseriis

Modern rendering: Man is filled with many miseries

Modern container: note

Alignment scope: Original Latin marginal phrase and its supplied note translation

Word and construction: The indexed Latin form supplies the filling, depletion or bodily-condition meaning explained here within the full phrase.

Sense relation: The ordinary filling verb is transferred from physical contents to affliction.

Further local use

Printed “repleta” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: repleo.

Here: Sumptuous dinners are filled with strife, opposed to the little table’s peace.

Context: Burton cites Chytraeus’s record of a dining-room inscription; its place and text remain partly uncollated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Lautaque prandia lite repleta

Modern rendering: And sumptuous dinners Filled with strife

Sense relation: The filling participle has a moral rather than medical content.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

repletio

Printed “repletio” (Latin; lemma).

Filling or fullness.

Here: The margin specifies excessive filling with food as a cause of melancholy.

Context: The Latin is in Burton’s margin; its English translation is supplied separately from the body’s cited physicians.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: Nimia repletio ciborum

Modern rendering: Excessive filling with food

Modern container: note

Alignment scope: Original Latin marginal phrase and its supplied note translation

Word and construction: The indexed Latin form supplies the filling, depletion or bodily-condition meaning explained here within the full phrase.

Further local use

Printed “repletionem” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: repletio.

Here: Repletion refers to a full stomach before conception.

Context: The margin belongs to Cardan’s historical, sweeping hereditary claim; it is neither verified genetic explanation nor current counsel.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: Coitus super repletionem pessimus

Modern rendering: Intercourse after repletion is very bad

Modern container: note

Alignment scope: Original Latin marginal phrase and its supplied note translation

Word and construction: The indexed Latin form supplies the filling, depletion or bodily-condition meaning explained here within the full phrase.

Sense relation: The same Latin fullness noun applied to a specified bodily compartment.

Further local use

Printed “repletione” (Latin; lemma).

Citation key: repletio.

Here: Fullness of the veins is one of several proposed signs of excessive blood.

Context: The historical bloodletting prescription is attributed to Valescus and Salvian and is conditional on signs, season and strength; no procedure is recommended here.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: ex venarum repletione

Modern rendering: from the fullness of the veins

Modern container: note

Alignment scope: Original Latin marginal phrase and its supplied note translation

Word and construction: The indexed Latin form supplies the filling, depletion or bodily-condition meaning explained here within the full phrase.

Sense relation: The same Latin fullness noun applied to a specified bodily compartment.

repletion

Printed “repletion” (English; lemma).

Excessive filling or bodily fullness.

Here: Overfilling is opposed to depletion in the warning against dietary extremes.

Context: Burton cites Celsus and Iacchinus after differing prescriptions for particular patients; the claim is that both extremes may harm.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: repletion and inanition

Modern rendering: overfilling and emptying the body

Word and construction: Repletion supplies overfilling; inanition supplies emptying the body.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.