From the book
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Robert Burton · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordVentricle can name a cavity or chamber, but it can also mean the stomach.
- In the Anatomy of MelancholyThe anatomy digression explicitly identifies “The Ventricle or Stomack.”
- In this editionThe modern column keeps “middle ventricle” in the brain account but renders “fourth creek” as “fourth chamber.”
- A place to readstomach and pylorus, heart creeks and brain ventricles
Meaning
Ventricle can name a cavity or chamber, but it can also mean the stomach. The associated creek or Creek likewise denotes a cavity or recess in the anatomical passages, including chambers of the heart as well as the brain. Context decides the organ: a Middle ventricle among the brain’s cavities is different from the stomach whose lower outlet is the pylorus. The Latin forms ventriculus, ventriculum, ventriculi and ventriculo also occur with the gastric sense.
Use in the book
The stomach as a containing cavity
The anatomy digression explicitly identifies “The Ventricle or Stomack.” It lies below the diaphragm and is the kitchen of the first digestion, transforming food into chyle. Its two mouths are openings: the upper can itself be called the stomach, while the lower is named Pylorus. The language of kitchen, mouth and door describes processing, reception and passage rather than several unrelated organs. Later, when Diocles is reported to derive hypochondriacal melancholy from inflammation of the pylorus, “the neather mouth of the Ventricle” must therefore mean the stomach’s lower opening. Diocles’s explanation is one among alternatives listed in the same paragraph.
The Latin stomach-family extends this digestive sense across the book. An early dietary margin says that the stomach receives and digests pleasing foods more readily. In the account of hypochondriacal causes, veins grow hot “between the stomach and liver”; Burton’s following English relocates them more loosely “about” the two organs. A later margin describes dark vapours rising from the stomach to the brain. These uses place the gastric cavity within a connected bodily system, rather than treating every ventricul- form as a cerebral chamber.
The relation can be reciprocal. The head-melancholy symptom discussion warns that stomach disturbances may coexist with a primarily cerebral disorder. Its marginal Latin says the two organs transmit their affections to each other and that the brain is rarely affected without the stomach. In treatment, the stomach and liver can demand conflicting changes because the former is described as cold and the latter as hot. Burton consequently reports a warning against unnecessary intervention. Gastric location does not establish one simple causal direction or a remedy suitable for every part.
The family continues through dietary and medicinal recommendations. A marginal explanation of sleeping posture speaks of food settled at the bottom of the stomach and the liver beneath it; other margins discuss the amount the stomach can bear, food’s digestion and remedies thought to strengthen or purge it. One phrase, ventriculi regimen, is more uncertain: the supplied edition renders it “the stomach’s governing region” and suggests that an anatomical region may have been intended. The wording remains unresolved rather than being silently replaced. These are historical accounts of treatment and bodily process.
Chambers and recesses
The brain’s ventricles are receptacles for spirits brought from the heart and refined for the soul’s operations. The middle ventricle communicates with the other cavities; the fourth creek receives animal spirits and conveys them towards the spinal marrow. The account locates imagination and thought in the middle cavity and memory in the fourth, with the qualifications “they place” and “they say.” The spatial meaning of ventricle is shared, while the particular physiology and faculty locations belong to the authorities Burton summarizes.
The heart too is divided into two creeks, right and left, receiving and distributing blood, spirits and air in the historical account. Thus creek is not exclusively a cerebral term. Elsewhere “all the creeks of the brain” means its recesses through which disturbed spirits and humours wander; it need not specify one numbered ventricle. The word also occurs for geographical inlets elsewhere, but its present anatomical force is cavity or recess. The separate article on Cerebral chambers follows the faculty map and the competing accounts of ventricular disease in detail.
Related entries
Cerebral chambers; Organical parts; Heart and cordolium; Anatomical membranes; Concoction; Chyle; Meseraic; Hypochondria; Vapours
Places to read
- 1.1.2.4stomach and pylorus, heart creeks and brain ventricles
- First Partition · paragraph 1Latin ventriculus in the account of dietary pleasure and digestion
- 1.2.5.4veins between stomach and liver; the pylorus as lower gastric outlet
- First Partition · paragraph 2, 6overlapping stomach and brain symptoms and their reciprocal influence
- First Partition · paragraph 19vapours rising from stomach to brain
- First Partitionthe brain’s creeks as recesses in an account of apparitions
- Second Partition · paragraph 3–5gastric capacity, digestion, exercise timing and sleeping posture
- Second Partitionstomach-directed remedies, conflicting organ conditions and the unresolved ventriculi regimen
In this edition
The modern column keeps “middle ventricle” in the brain account but renders “fourth creek” as “fourth chamber.” At the passage “two creeks” similarly becomes “two chambers” of the heart. The complete phrase “neather mouth of the Ventricle” becomes “lower opening of the stomach,” making the referent explicit. Neither “lower opening” nor “pylorus” is the meaning of Ventricle alone.
Latin quoted in Burton’s body text is separately translated before his English restatement where the two differ, as. Latin gastric forms in the margins remain source quotations; their accompanying English translations are supplied by the edition. The awkward ventriculi regimen is preserved and qualified, not presented as an established anatomical name.
creek · creeks · local use 1
Printed “creeks” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Right and left chambers of the heart.
Context: Burton’s cardiac anatomy, distinct from brain context.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: two creeks right & Left
Modern rendering, Modern wording: two chambers, right and left
Alignment scope: whole counted noun phrase
creek · creeks · local use 2
Printed “creeks” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Recesses of the brain traversed by agitated spirits and humours.
Context: Lemnius’s attributed explanation of apparitions; not limited to a numbered chamber.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: all the creeks of the brain
Modern rendering, Modern wording: every recess of the brain
Alignment scope: whole quantified noun phrase
fourth creek
Printed “fourth creek” (English; phrase).
Fourth cerebral chamber reached by a passage from the middle ventricle.
Context: Cavity in the historical brain map.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: extends it self to the fourth creek
Modern rendering, Modern wording: extends to the fourth chamber
Alignment scope: whole verbal construction
fourth creek · fourth Creek
Printed “fourth Creek” (English; phrase).
Rear cerebral chamber receiving animal spirits and assigned memory.
Context: They say qualifies memory’s localization; follows the earlier lower-case occurrence.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: The fourth Creek behind the head
Modern rendering, Modern wording: The fourth chamber, at the back of the head
Alignment scope: whole locative noun phrase
middle ventricle
Printed “Middle ventricle” (English; phrase).
Cerebral cavity where the other two meet, assigned imagination and thought.
Context: They place marks attribution of faculty location; not an independent modern claim.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: The Middle ventricle, is a common concourse, & cavity of them both
Modern rendering, Modern wording: The middle ventricle is a shared cavity where the other two meet.
Alignment scope: whole descriptive clause
neather mouth of the ventricle
Printed “neather mouth of the Ventricle” (English; phrase).
Lower opening of the stomach, identified as pylorus.
Context: Diocles supposed inflammation here to cause this melancholy; other causes follow.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: the neather mouth of the Ventricle
Modern rendering, Modern wording: the lower opening of the stomach
Alignment scope: whole noun phrase; Ventricle alone corresponds to stomach
pylorus
Printed “Pylorus” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
The lower opening or door of the stomach.
Context: Burton’s description, attributed door metaphor to Wecker.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: is named Pylorus
Modern rendering, Modern wording: is named the pylorus
ventricle
Printed “Ventricle” (English; lemma). Attestation: word form.
The stomach, a cavity involved in the first stage of digestion.
Context: Burton’s explicit gastric definition.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: The Ventricle or Stomack
Modern rendering, Modern wording: The ventricle, or stomach
Alignment scope: whole alternative-name phrase
ventriculi regimen
Printed “ventriculi regimen” (Latin; phrase).
Literally the stomach’s governing or regulation; an unresolved phrase given the interpretive spatial rendering the stomach’s governing region by the supplied edition, which tentatively suggests an anatomical region.
Context: Attributed site of treatment in Mercatus; exact intended sense unresolved in edition.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: aut prope ventriculi regimen
Modern rendering, Modern wording: or near the stomach’s governing region
Alignment scope: whole phrase including aut prope; supplied interpretive rendering, not a direct regimen-to-region equivalence; no emendation
ventriculus · ventriculum
Printed “ventriculum” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
The stomach as one endpoint of a location between stomach and liver.
Context: Quoted Latin specifies between; Burton’s following English says about.
Source: original body
Source wording, Original wording: inter ventriculum & jecur
Modern rendering, Modern wording: between the stomach and liver
Alignment scope: whole prepositional phrase; ventriculum supplies stomach only
ventriculus
Printed “ventriculus” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Stomach as active receiver of foods taken with pleasure.
Context: Fuchs’s dietary exception quoted in Burton margin; translation editorial.
Source: Burton note original
Source wording, Original wording: ventriculus avidius complectitur
Modern rendering, Modern wording: The stomach receives more eagerly
Alignment scope: whole Latin clause fragment; note translation
Edition note: checked note translation; not original wording
ventriculus · ventriculo
Printed “ventriculo” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Stomach; ablative in the phrase à ventriculo, from the stomach. The onward brain direction belongs to in cerebrum in the surrounding construction.
Context: Plater’s attributed account of thick black vapours; stomach is source, brain destination.
Source: Burton note original
Source wording, Original wording: à ventriculo in cerebrum exhalant
Modern rendering, Modern wording: rise from the stomach into the brain
Alignment scope: whole prepositional and verbal construction; note translation
Edition note: checked note translation; not original wording
ventriculus · ventriculi
Printed “ventriculi” (Latin; lemma). Attestation: word form.
Of the stomach, specifying the bottom where food settles.
Context: Crato’s historical sleeping-posture explanation; not a cerebral ventricle.
Source: Burton note original
Source wording, Original wording: ad fundum ventriculi
Modern rendering, Modern wording: at the bottom of the stomach
Alignment scope: whole prepositional noun phrase; note translation
Edition note: checked note translation; not original wording