Vertigo

Use in the book

The medical catalogues put vertigo in several relationships. It is listed among affections of the brain’s ventricles and among bodily signs of head-melancholy. Yet the detailed account of hypochondriacal symptoms also includes recurring vertigo and giddiness, and the discussion of causes assigned to particular organs names vertigo among symptoms proceeding from the stomach. Burton’s later reference to vapours ascending from stomach to head makes that connection explicit. The distribution is a warning against treating every occurrence as proof that the disease starts in the head.

Dryness of the brain is said to produce a light, vertiginous head and wakefulness, while moisture is associated with dullness and drowsiness. These are reported qualitative distinctions within humoral reasoning. Dizziness also belongs to the bodily cost of scholarly overwork: in the fable of the exhausted ox and unhelpful camel, the soul that refuses the body relief eventually has to become sick with it. Vertigo interrupts study and defeats the imagined independence of mental labour from the body.

The adjective can move away from a sensation of turning. The paragraph headed “Inconstancy” describes melancholic people as “vertiginous,” unable to resolve business and swayed by every word; it then abruptly adds that once resolved they may be obstinate. Here vertiginous names instability of decision. Later, vertigo forms one element of the escalating list of torments assigned to jealousy, among bitterness, madness, plague and hell. The word helps make the passion disorienting; the catalogue does not establish a separate neurological diagnosis in every jealous person.

In religious controversy the physical sensation becomes a model for epistemic error. Those seized by dizziness think the world turns, though the disturbance lies in themselves; Burton compares this with controversialists who regard everyone else as wrong. The preceding paragraph describes refusing to yield despite universal contradiction, and the following one applies charges of novelty and stubbornness to accusers themselves. The bodily comparison serves a polemical judgment about self-deception, not a neutral test proving which religious party is right. His later Commentatores præcipites & vertiginosos similarly caricatures interpreters who assign prophetic mysteries to particular people and confidently date the world’s end.

Not every religious occurrence is solely metaphorical. In the attack on excessive fasting, monks and anchorites are said to become melancholy and vertiginous after emptiness, alongside bodily wasting and imagined strange noises. The bodily adjective remains active inside the polemic. Finally, Burton expressly declines a separate treatment of vertigo and several other symptoms because physicians discuss them extensively elsewhere. Its frequent appearances in the Anatomy should therefore not be mistaken for a complete specialist treatise on the condition.

Related entries

Distraction and Judgment own the wider vocabulary of unstable attention and evaluation. For the separate question of an illness’s expected course, see Prognostics. Compare Epilepsy and falling sickness (Epilepsy and falling sickness) and Palsy (Palsy) for related disease classifications; Consumption and phthisis (Consumption and phthisis) for the other bodily illness named in the ox-and-camel account of overwork.

Explained vocabulary: Additional Terms.

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraph 36Vertigenous in the rotating-earth and moon-struck joke.
2. Symptoms Particular to the Three Distinct Species. Section 3, Member 2 · paragraph 55Vertigo among bodily signs of head-melancholy.
3. Subsection 3. Classification of Diseases of the Head · paragraph 14The early classification among internal brain disorders.
4. Subsection 2. Symptoms or Signs in the Mind · paragraph 18Vertiginous decision-making, followed by the contrary tendency to obstinacy.
5. Member 2, Subsection 1 Symptoms of Head Melancholy · paragraph 5Dizziness attributed to dryness of the brain.
6. Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 14Recurring vertigo within the hypochondriacal symptom cluster.
7. Subsection 2 Symptoms of Windy Hypochondriacal Melancholy · paragraph 16Vertigo attributed to a stomach-related origin.
8. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraph 22Dizziness interrupting excessive study in the ox-and-camel analogy.
9. Subsection 6 Remedies for Accompanying Symptoms: To Bring Sleep, and Against Fearful Dreams, Redness and So On · paragraph 13The deliberate omission of separate specialist treatment.
10. Subsection 2 Corrective Medicines to Expel Wind. Against Constipation, and So On · paragraph 56Vapours ascending from stomach to head.
11. Symptoms of Jealousy: Fear, Sorrow, Suspicion, Strange Actions, Gestures, Outrages, Confinement, Oaths, Trials, Laws, and So On · paragraph 4Vertigo in the intensified language of jealousy.
12. Causes of Religious Melancholy. From the Devil, Through Miracles, Apparitions and Oracles. His Instruments or Agents: Politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics and Blind Guides. In Them: Credulity, Fear, Blind Zeal, Ignorance, Solitude, Curiosity, Pride, Vanity, Presumption and So On. His Devices: Fasting, Solitude, Hope, Fear and the Rest · paragraph 8Dizziness among alleged consequences of excessive fasting.
13. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraph 27The unyielding controversialist who supplies the analogy’s target. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
14. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraph 28The dizzy observer as a figure for error projected upon others.
15. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraph 29Burton turns his cited accusers’ tests back upon themselves. [Context, not a headword attestation.]
16. General Symptoms: Love of Their Own Sect; Hatred of All Other Religions; Obstinacy and Ill Temper; Readiness to Undergo Any Danger or Adversity for It; Martyrs; Blind Zeal and Blind Obedience; Fasts and Vows; Belief in Incredible and Impossible Things. Particular Symptoms Among Pagans, Muslims, Jews and Christians; and Among Christians, Heretics Old and New, Schismatics, Scholastic Theologians, Prophets, Enthusiasts and So On · paragraph 19Rash and vertiginous prophetic commentators.

In this edition

The modern column changes its English with the use: “dizzy” for the bodily adjective, “giddy” for inconstancy, and “dizziness” for vertigo in the jealous catalogue. In the cosmological sentence, “dizzy, spinning, and moonstruck” corresponds to the original sequence “giddy, vertigenous and lunatick”; “spinning” is the local rendering of vertigenous, not the definition of every occurrence of vertigo. In the controversy passage the translation expands “all err” to “everyone else is mistaken,” making the argumentative switch from moving things to mistaken people more explicit.

Vertigo and giddiness

Bodily dizziness, here recurring in attacks.

Original wording: “Vertigo and giddiness come by fits”

Modern wording: “vertigo and dizziness come in fits”

The English giddiness helps gloss the learned disease-word. The phrase occurs in a hypochondriacal symptom cluster, so the occurrence is not limited to the earlier head-melancholy list. Further checked occurrences: the passage; the passage. Lookup: vertigo; giddiness; dizziness.

vertiginous [bodily]

Affected by dizziness.

Original wording: “their heads will be light, vertiginous”

Modern wording: “their heads will feel light and dizzy”

The predicate is assigned to a dry-brain cause in the historical explanation. The same adjective describes fasting-induced bodily disturbance later, where it remains more than a general insult. Further checked occurrences: the passage. Lookup: vertiginous; dizzy.

vertiginous [inconstant]

Unsettled or changeable in decision.

Original wording: “vertiginous, restlesse, unapt to resolve of any business”

Modern wording: “giddy, restless, unable to decide on any business”

The following oscillation between willing and not willing identifies the local sense. Burton then contrasts this instability with obstinacy once a decision is fixed. Lookup: inconstancy; giddy judgment.

vertigenous

Spinning or dizzy, in a joke about the moving earth and its inhabitants.

Original wording: “giddy, vertigenous and lunatick”

Modern wording: “dizzy, spinning, and moonstruck”

The three-part modern phrase translates the three-part original sequence. The conditional “if” preserves the playful inference from the earth-as-moon hypothesis rather than asserting a literal diagnosis of humanity. Lookup: vertigenous; spinning.

vertigo [jealousy image]

Disorientation invoked as one of the torments of jealousy.

Original wording: “madness, vertigo, plague, hell”

Modern wording: “madness, dizziness, plague, hell”

The escalation crosses disease, affect and infernal punishment. This is a figurative characterization of a passion’s misery, not a report that all jealous people have a separately identified vertigo disorder. Lookup: jealous dizziness.

vertiginous [error analogy]

Dizzy people used as a comparison for judgment that projects its own error outward.

Original wording: “such as are vertiginous, they think all turns round and moves, all err”

Modern wording: “people suffering from vertigo, they think that everything turns and moves, that everyone else is mistaken”

The bodily perception is the comparison’s starting point; the claim about everyone else being mistaken applies it to religious controversy. The surrounding passage, not the medical word alone, supplies that polemical target. Lookup: vertiginous judgment.

Commentatores præcipites & vertiginosos

Rash and dizzy commentators.

Original wording: “Commentatores præcipites & vertiginosos”

Modern wording: “rash and dizzy commentators”

Præcipites conveys rashness, vertiginosos dizzy or disordered judgment. The accusation concerns confident prophetic interpretation and precise dates, not simply readers with a bodily symptom. Lookup: commentatores; præcipites; vertiginosos.