Stone and gravel · Lexicon

From the book

The Anatomy of Melancholy

Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordStone, as a disease-name, denotes bodily calculi, particularly urinary stone disease.
In the Anatomy of MelancholyStone first helps to expose the limits of a tidy classification.
In this editionThe modern column variously retains “stone,” uses “stones,” and specifies “urinary stones” where the explanatory context supports it.
A place to readAdmission that the species are difficult to distinguish.

Meaning

Stone, as a disease-name, denotes bodily calculi, particularly urinary stone disease. Burton can speak of being “sick of the stone,” rather than of a loose piece of mineral. His lists do not invariably specify the anatomical site: “with Stone, Gout, Jandice” records coexisting disorders without saying whether the stone lies in kidney or bladder. In the Epicurus example the marginal description does identify bladder disease and difficulty passing urine. Gravel is an editorial finding aid under this heading, not a form found in the checked original body or notes.

Use in the book

Stone first helps to expose the limits of a tidy classification. Burton has just admitted how difficult it is to separate the three species of melancholy when he cites Claudinus’s mixed case. Later he accumulates stone, headache, dropsy, epilepsy and other disorders, ending not with a diagnostic rule but with a question: who can confine such mixtures “into method”? The stone is neither a synonym for melancholy nor proof that melancholy has one bodily location. It is a companion disorder that complicates the physician’s distinctions.

The term also enters causal and therapeutic systems whose status must remain visible. Mercado is reported as placing stone among hereditary diseases. In the diet discussion, Burton distinguishes dairy food as nourishing for the sound, particularly children, from its supposed dangers for people already affected by stone and certain other conditions. Paracelsus’s followers put stone under gout, one of four governing classes. Burton immediately objects that the proposal to cure all subordinate diseases by curing their principal class is “too generall.” The classification is reported and qualified, not adopted as his settled account.

Two consolation examples turn on suffering rather than classification. Epicurus’s joy in his discoveries counterbalances “pain of stone and colick”; Erasmus comforts himself because his agonizing stone disease does not repel other people. The latter comparison separates the patient’s pain from its effect on companions. The following list of plague, apoplexy and visible sores mixes contagion, frightening appearance and social exclusion: it does not assert that every listed illness is catching. The Epicurus note, meanwhile, warns that Burton’s “conceit of immortality” should not simply be turned into a belief in a rewarding afterlife.

Stone appears among diseases physicians allegedly cannot cure in a deliberately hostile stretch of the discussion of physic. The subsequent return to honouring physicians prevents this sentence from standing for Burton’s whole assessment of medicine. In the cure of love, stone and strangury instead become allegations that someone is advised to make about a beloved. A report of what to say to frighten a lover is not evidence that the beloved actually has either disorder.

Related entries

Evacuation and retention supplies the broader account of bodily retention and discharge; Costiveness concerns another obstructed function, not another name for stone. Lodestone and adamant treats magnetic mineral vocabulary, not every kind of stone. For the alchemical philosophers’ stone, Matter discusses Erastus’s dismissive “non Ens” judgment. For neighbouring clinical comparisons, see Dropsy (Dropsy) and Epilepsy and falling sickness (Epilepsy and falling sickness).

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

Subsection 4. The Species or Kinds of Melancholy · paragraph 54Admission that the species are difficult to distinguish. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Subsection 4. The Species or Kinds of Melancholy · paragraph 55Stone in a reported mixed consultation case.
Subsection 6. Parents as a Cause Through Inheritance · paragraph 44Mercado’s reported hereditary-disease list.
Subsection 1 Bad Diet as a Cause. Substance. The Quality of Foods · paragraph 46A dietary distinction between the sound and those affected by stone.
Member 3 Subsection 1 Passions and Disturbances of the Mind and How They Cause Melancholy · paragraph 41Literal stone in the repeated-rain analogy, a sense contrast. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Subsection 7. A Collection of Other Events That Cause Melancholy: The Death of Friends, Losses, and So On · paragraph 25Philosophers stone: alchemical, not pathological, use. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our Circumstances, Mingled With Other Diseases, Occurring in Fits, From Inclination, and So On · paragraph 28The repeated question about symptoms that resist method.
Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 6Stone subordinated to gout in the reported four-class scheme.
Subsection 3. Concerning Medicine · paragraph 7Burton’s immediate objection to the scheme’s therapeutic generality. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Member 2 Bodily Deformity, Sickness, Low Birth, and Particular Discontents · paragraph 17; note 6515; note 6516Epicurus’s suffering; the accompanying note names the bladder, while the accompanying note qualifies the immortality interpretation.
Member 8 Against Melancholy Itself · paragraph 26Erasmus’s non-repellent but severely painful disease.
Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraph 17Stone in the polemical list of supposed medical failures.
Member 1 Subsection 1 Medical Treatment by Medicines · paragraph 24Burton’s explicit return to honouring physicians. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Subsection 4 Precious Stones Metals and Minerals as Alteratives · paragraph 38Philosophical stones in Erastus’s hostile judgment, discussed under Matter. [Context, not a disease-sense attestation.]
Subsection 5 Alteratives and Cordials That Strengthen the Body, Disperse the Remaining Matter and Improve the Temperament · paragraph 4Bezoars stone: medicinal substance, not the patient’s stone disease. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
Resist the Beginnings, Avoid Occasions, Change One’s Location; Fair and Foul Means, Contrary Passions and Ingenious Devices; Introduce Another Love and Disparage the Former · paragraph 51Stone and strangury in proposed disparagement of a beloved.

In this edition

The modern column variously retains “stone,” uses “stones,” and specifies “urinary stones” where the explanatory context supports it. These are contextual renderings, not evidence of separate Burtonian diagnoses. Strangury names painful or difficult urination and is listed alongside stone, not defined as the same thing. By contrast, Bezoars stone is a medicinal substance, and the philosophers stone belongs to alchemical hopes: neither passage attests the disease sense. The literal stone penetrated by rain likewise illustrates repeated impressions on the mind, not urinary pathology.

Stone; the stone

Bodily calculous disease, usually urinary stone disease in these passages.

Original wording: “grievously sick of the stone”

Modern wording: “grievously ill with the stone”

The definite article makes the substance-name a conventional illness-name. The anecdote emphasizes intolerable pain without a repellent appearance; it does not identify a precise stone location. Further checked occurrences: the passage; the passage; the passage; the passage. Lookup: stone disease; urinary calculi; gravel [editorial access form, not an attested Burton form].

Vesicæ morbo

Disease of the bladder.

Original wording: “Vesicæ morbo laborans”

Note translation: “suffering from a disease of the bladder”

This marginal Latin supplies an anatomical specification absent from the body’s brief “stone and colick.” It belongs to the cited account of Epicurus, not to a definition locating every stone in the bladder. Lookup: vesica; bladder disease.

Strangury

Painful or difficult passage of urine.

Original wording: “Stone, Strangury, Gout”

Modern wording: “stone, strangury, gout”

Earlier supplementary ownership remains at Strangury (Strangury, Batch 4), attached to Physick. This local record adds the contrast with stone rather than replacing that note. The sequence names stone and strangury separately. The modern column later expands the latter as “painful dribbling urination” in the allegations about a beloved; that expansion is local explanation, not a claim that all difficulty urinating comes from stone. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: strangury; painful urination.

Bezoars stone; Bezoar stone

An animal concretion treated as a medicinal substance, not the patient’s stone disease.

Original wording: “Bezoars stone”

Modern wording: “bezoar stone”

Burton reports Ayrerus’s preference for this substance among cordials and then attributes a special power against melancholy to it. The claimed benefit belongs to the historical account, not to present medical advice. note identifies bezoars as concretions formed in animals’ digestive tracts. This is a sense contrast with bodily stone disease, not a new main article on medicinal ingredients. Additional original wording in the same passage: “Bezoar stone”. Lookup: bezoar; bezoar stone; Bezoars stone.