The anatomy of melancholy : what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it. In three partitions. With their several sections, members, and subsections, philosophically, medicinally, historically opened and cut up / by Democritus Junior. With a satirical preface, conducing to the following discourse.

Robert Burton

Date:: 1849

Credit: The anatomy of melancholy : what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it. In three partitions. With their several sections, members, and subsections, philosophically, medicinally, historically opened and cut up / by Democritus Junior. With a satirical preface, conducing to the following discourse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$transform ourselves, overthrow our constitutions, dprovoke God to anger, and heap upon us this of melancholy, and all kinds of incurable diseases, as a just and deserved punishment of our sins. Subsect. II.— The Definition, Number, Division of Diseases. What a disease is, almost every physician defines. 6Fernelius calleth it an “Affection of the body contrary to nature.” 1 Fuschius and Crato, “ an hin- derance, hurt, or alteration of any action of the body, or part of it.” g Tho- losanus, “ a dissolution of that league which is between body and soul, and a perturbation of it; as health the perfection, and makes to the preservation of it.” 11 Labeo in Agellius, “ an ill habit of the body, opposite to nature, hin- dering the use of it.” Others otherwise, all to this effect. Number of Diseases. ] How many diseases there are, is a question not yet determined; 1 Pliny reckons up 300 from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot: elsewhere he saith, morborum infinita multitudo, their number is infinite. Howsoever it was in those times, it boots not; in our days I am sure the number is much augmented: * “ macies, et nova febrium Terris incubit cohors.” For besides many epidemical diseases unheard of, and altogether unknown to Galen and Hippocrates, as seorbutum, small-pox, plica, sweating sickness, morbus Gallicus, &c., we have many proper and peculiar almost to every part. No Man free from some Disease or other.] No man amongst us so sound, of so good a constitution, that hath not some impediment of body or mind. Quisque suos patimur manes, we have all our infirmities, first or last, more or less. There will be peradventure in an age, or one of a thousand, like Zeno- philus the musician in kPliny, that may happily live 105 years without any manner of impediment; a Pollio Romulus, that can preserve himself umwith wine and oil;” a man as fortunate as Q. Metellus, of whom Valerius so much brags ; a man as healthy as Otto Herwardus, a senator of Augsburg in Ger- many, whom Leovitius the astrologer brings in for an example and instance of certainty in his art; who because he had the significators in his geniture fortunate, and free from the hostile aspects of Saturn and Mars, being a very cold man, “ 0 could not remember that ever he was sick.” p Paracelsus may brag that he could make a man live 400 years or more, if he might bring him up from his infancy, and diet him as he list; and some physicians hold, that there is no certain period of man’s life; but it may still by temperance and physic be prolonged. We find in the meantime, by common experience, that no man can escape, but that of1' Hesiod is true: “IlXe/u |u.ev 7«p ycaa Kaxwv, n\ein de OdXaacra, “ Th’ earth’s full of maladies, and full the sea, Novo-cud’ avOpomoi eiv ecj>' bpt-epri, Tjd’ enl whtI Which set upon us both by night and day.” ’Aiiro/iaroi (poirCoai.” Division of Diseases.-] If you require a more exact division of these ordinary diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to physicians ;s they will tell you of acute and chronic, first and secondary, lethales, salutares, errant, fixed, simple, compound, connexed, or consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in d Intemperantia, luxus, ingluvies, et infinita hujusmodi flagitia, qua: divinas poenas merentur. Crato. c Fern. Path. 1. 1. c. 1. Morbus est affectus contra naturam corpori insides. f Fusch. Instit. 1. 3. Sect. 1. c. 3. a quo primum vitiatur actio. s Dissolutio foederis in corpore, ut sanitas est consummatio. h Lib. 4. cap. 2. Morbus est habitus contra naturam, qui usum ejus, &c. 1 Cap. 11. lib. 7. * Horat. lib. 1. ode 3. “ Emaciation, and a new cohort of fevers broods over the earth.” k Cap. 50. lib. 7. Centum et quinque vixit annos sine ullo incommodo. m Intus mulso, foras oleo. n Exemplis genitur. praefixis Ephemer. cap. de infirmitat. 0 Q,ui, quoad pueritiae ultimam memoriam recordari potest non meminit se aegrotum decubuisse. p Lib. de vita longa. r Oper. et dies. s See Fernelius Path. lib. 1. ca >. 9, 10, 11, 12. Fuschius instit. 1. 3. sect. 1. c. 7. Wecker. Synt.$

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