Melancholia

Dana Jalobeanu · Charles T. Wolfe Editors Delphine Bellis · Zvi Biener · Angus Gowland Ruth Edith Hagengruber · Hiro Hirai · Martin Lenz Gideon Manning · Silvia Manzo · Cesare Pastorino Justin E. H. Smith · Marius Stan · Kirsten Walsh Section Editors Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences Dana Jalobeanu • Charles T. Wolfe Editors Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences With 170 Figures Editors Dana Jalobeanu Department of Theoretical Philosophy University of Bucharest Bucharest, Romania Charles T. Wolfe Department of Philosophy Université de Toulouse Jean-Jaurès Toulouse, France ICUB-Humanities University of Bucharest Bucharest, Romania ISBN 978-3-319-31067-1 ISBN 978-3-319-31069-5 (eBook) ISBN 978-3-319-31068-8 (print and electronic bundle) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31069-5 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. 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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland M Melancholia Fabrizio Bigotti Institut für Geschichte der Medizin, Julius Maximilians Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany Centre for Medical History, College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom Related Topics Brain · Humoral pathology · Hippocrates · Galen · Galenism Synonyms Melancholy; Sorrow Definition/Introduction In humoral pathology, melancholia (the Latin word for “melancholy” or “black bile”) refers to a dark and thick juice whose accumulation in the body was believed to cause the homonymous disease and was denoted by symptoms such as fear and deep sorrow. Since the time of Aristotle, melancholy has been associated with an inclination toward intellectual pursuits, spiritual depth, and artistic creativity. In keeping with this trend and with Galen’s classification of temperaments, “melancholic” in the Middle Ages came to be identified as one the four fundamental temperaments (the others being phlegmatic, sanguine, and choleric) describing the basic typology of all human characters. Although both the medical rationale and the symptoms linked to melancholy changed in the early modern period, melancholy remained central to medical and nonmedical theorizations of sorrow/depression until the end of the eighteenth century, featuring as one of the most durable concepts in Western culture. Characteristics In ancient and premodern medicine, melancholy (melancholia) refers to one of the four humors produced by the body (i.e., blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy) and, by extension, to the disease resulting from its imbalance (Nutton 2004: 82–86). The name derives from the Greek mélaina cholē (melaιna wolή) meaning “dark juice,” also translated into Latin as atra bilis (“black bile”), atrabiliaris temperamentum (“melancholic temperament”), or simply atramentum (“black liquid”). Like all other humors, melancholy corresponded to a specific element of the universe (earth), to a particular period of the day (night), as well as to a specific season (autumn) and planet (Saturn) (Fig. 1). Its color was associated with dark discharges, especially feces, urine, and vomit, all of which qualified as cold, bitter, and corrosive in nature © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Jalobeanu, C. T. Wolfe (eds.), Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_385-1 2 Melancholia Melancholia, Fig. 1 Isidore of Seville, diagram with the four humors, and their connections to the various temperaments, elements, and seasons of the year (MS Pa. 32, fol. 62r, Zofingen, Stiftsbibliothek) (Ahonen 2014: 19). Melancholy was further believed to be collected in the spleen and then to accumulate in the stomach, in the veins, and in the brain. Depending on its quantity and intensity, physicians distinguished between “natural” and “unnatural” melancholy. Natural melancholy (melancholia naturalis) corresponded to the thicker part of the blood, and its imbalance resulted in a mild inclination to sadness and idleness. These characteristics were seen as innate and often assimilated to the brilliance of mind and creative talent. By contrast, unnatural or “burnt” melancholy (melancholia non naturalis seu adusta) resulted from the overheating of the extant humors, most usually yellow bile, and gave origin to symptoms such as sudden outbursts of rage, boldness, or, by contrast, sudden fear, delusion, and suicidal attempts. Therapy included changes in diet (regimen being one of the most important factors responsible for the production of melancholy, with food such as meat and cabbage particularly prone to generate melancholic blood), increased exercise or rest, walks, and pleasant conversation. More extreme remedies, however, included emetics (e.g., poisonous herbs, such as white hellebore) and bloodletting. Besides its sedative effect, the efficacy of bloodletting rested on one of the most solid principles of humoral pathology, namely, that blood – unlike other humors, Melancholia whose excess was mostly qualitative – could also be controlled quantitatively, which could assist the treatment of other imbalances in the body. Medical Rationale The differentiation between melancholy as a natural humor and as a pathology began with Hippocrates, who linked the excess of melancholy in the brain to symptoms of fear (phobos) and sorrow (dysthymia). The Roman physician Celsus (c. 25 BC–50 AD) described melancholy as a form of madness (insania), while Galen (131–216 AD) stressed its role in hindering the normal activity of the brain, describing the symptoms as leading to hallucination, sadness, or excessive boldness. The Byzantine physician Paulus of Aegina (seventh century AD) defined melancholy in opposition to mania as “an acute or local disease without fever,” a definition that was incorporated within the standard description of the disease in later centuries. In the Medieval Arabic world, Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980–1037) listed the general symptoms of melancholy as consisting in bad judgment, fear without cause, quick anger, delight in solitude, shaking, vertigo, inner clamor, and tingling, especially in the abdomen. This approach to the classification of symptoms was followed by Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198), and it is thereby passed onto the medieval scholastics. In the early modern period, a renewed interest in the classification of the mental disorders associated with melancholy arose. The French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) distinguished three types of melancholy in his Universa Medicina (first published in 1554 and in an expanded version in 1567): hypochondriac, affecting the region around the diaphragm; primary, affecting the brain; and a special “systemic” form affecting the veins and the whole body (Fernel 1607: 517–518). Hypochondriac melancholy resulted in flatulence and difficulty in digestion. Primary melancholy was believed to cloud the mind and to generate illusions and frantic behavior, while the most serious condition remained the systemic affecting the veins and the whole body, in that it 3 constituted a disease that was difficult if not impossible to cure. By the end of the sixteenth century, the interest in the psychological implications of melancholy greatly surpassed its physiological rationale. Works such A Treatise of Melancholie (1586) by Timothie Bright and the Lexicon Medicum Graeco-Latinum (1598) by Bartolomeo Castelli both associated melancholy primarily with the mental pathology and only secondarily with its underlying humoral causes. This process was helped also by a better and more rational classification of melancholic symptoms. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Swiss physician Felix Plater (1536–1614) provided probably the most important treatise for the study of mental disorders in his De functionum laesionibus (1609), where a new series of observations on melancholy appear. Melancholy is described as a form of mental alienation (alienatio mentis) affecting the faculty of imagination, the connection between the senses and the mind, thereby inducing a delusional state in the subject. Symptoms are said to comprehend fear of death, sadness, tantrums, misanthropy, and isolation, often compelling the affected subjects to imagine things which have no relation to reality (hallucinatio). Plater links these effects to an array of different causes, ranging from demoniac possession, the motion of the spirits in the brain, or, in the case of hypochondriac melancholy, vapors originating in the lower stomach that result from the corrosive nature of melancholy. The emphasis on symptoms rather than causes allowed melancholy as a concept to survive the demise of humoral pathology and for large parts of its theoretical elaboration to remain significantly unaltered throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth century. Indeed, as late as 1715, the Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738) could define melancholy with roughly the same characteristics as his predecessors, although the existence of humors had been discredited by then, and bodily fluids were now seen in terms of chemical compounds – that is, in terms of the excess and lack of acids and alkalis (Boerhaave 1715). 4 Melancholia Melancholy and Genius An influential tradition, stretching back to the Aristotelian collection of Problems (Problema XXX.1), associates melancholy with high intellectual achievements and artistic creativity. This tradition, which coupled the Platonic concept of frenzy and poetic inspiration (manίa, furor) with the medical concept of melancholy, profoundly influenced the way melancholy was understood for centuries (Klibansky et al. 1979: 15). According to the author of this collection, probably Theophrastus (371–c. 287 BC) or an Aristotelian scholar active around the same period, melancholy is a humor whose influence on the mind is particularly strong and thus can equally enable or prevent outstanding ability. The basis for the Aristotelian conception lies in the interdependence of the mind and the body (see ▶ “physiognomics”), with faculties of the mind (i.e., memory, imagination, intellect) likened to the other bodily operations and hence rendered subject to the same temperamental imbalances. In this sense, melancholy was said to be akin to wine-drinking and to produce the same effects, depending in part on the predisposition of the subject. Notably, melancholy was understood as being of two kinds, related to its double makeup as a hot–dry or cold–dry temperament. Individuals endowed with great mental capacities were usually located in the dry–hot spectrum of the melancholic temperament, while the opposite condition provoked dullness and stupidity. The hot–dry temperament was also responsible for poetic inspiration and divination. As the Aristotelian author remarks: [m]any too are subject to fits of exaltation and ecstasy, because this heat is located near the seat of the intellect; and this is how Sibyls and soothsayers arise and all that are divinely inspired, when they become such not by illness but by natural temperament. (Aristotle, Prob. 30.I.24) And yet the relation worked also contrariwise, with lifestyle influencing the production of melancholy in the body. The association between melancholy and genius was first revived in Renaissance Italy by Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and then expanded by authors such as Scipione Chiaramonti (1565–1652) and Robert Burton (1577–1640). In keeping with suggestions drawn from Aristotle and Galen, Ficino wrote a three-book treatise De triplici vita (“On life,” 1489) to establish the correct rules that scholars (studiosi) should follow in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. According to Ficino, the type of melancholy that causes high intellectual achievement is the natural one, which is subject to the influence of the stars, particularly Saturn. He notes, however, that scholars are particularly prone to melancholy and phlegm due to their lifestyle. Intense mental labor, in fact, heats the brain and produces unnatural melancholy and sorrow, which are exacerbated by a sedentary life and bad diet. A more minute analysis of the effects and characters associated with melancholy was pursued by the English writer and Anglican chaplain Robert Burton, who in his famous Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) collects all possible historical references to melancholy in an attempt to “dissect” the character of melancholic people, thus including historical examples from the bible, Greek and Arabic literature, as well as medicine and alchemy. With the Italian philosopher and astronomer Scipione Chiaramonti (1565–1652), the Aristotelian tradition eventually took on a specific moral connotation. Focusing on the effects of melancholia on human behavior, Chiaramonti’s work De atrabile, quoad mores attinet (“On black bile, insofar as it regards the habits,” published in 1640 but originally written in 1597) contains a detailed examination of the psychological effects of the humors on the body, including genius, fear, desperation, delusion, and stubbornness (Bigotti 2019: 96–104). These qualities originate from a natural inclination, but it rests entirely on the individual decision whether to develop good dispositions or to allow the bad ones to prevail. What the approaches of Chiaramonti and Burton demonstrate is a progressive move away from the strict medical significance of melancholy toward an account of it as a moral, literary, or physiognomic characteristic. This allowed melancholy to become a specific topos, in literature, art, and music, and to survive the demise of the humoral pathology, in what was to become the Melancholia 5 Melancholia, Fig. 2 Virgilius Solis (1534–1562) Braunschweig, Duke Anton Ulrich Museum, Inventory number VSolis AB 3.91 modern connotation of melancholia as portrayed in the series of engravings realized by Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Virgilius Solis (1534–1562, Fig. 2), Charles Le Brun (1619–1690), and Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801) or musically in the “Lachrimae, or Seaven Teares” (1604) by the English composer John Dowland (1563–1626). ▶ Hippocrates ▶ Humours, and the Mind ▶ Mental Disease in Early Modern Medicine ▶ Physiognomics ▶ Psychology, and Ethics References Cross-References ▶ Aristotle ▶ Complexion (cf. Temperament) ▶ Emotions and Early Modern Science ▶ Galen Primary Literature Aristoteles (1572) Aristotelis Stagiritae Problematum Duodequadraginta Sectiones quibus Alexandri Aprhodiaei Problematum Libri adiecti fuere. Symphorien Beraud, Lyon Averroes (1553) Colliget. Giunti, Venice 6 Avicenna (1544) Liber Canonis Avicennae (trans: Andrea Alpago). Giunti, Venice Boheraave H (1715) Aphorisms concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases. Translated from the last edition printed in Latin at Leyden, 1715. F. De Lacoste, London Bright T (1586) A treatise on Melancholy. Thomas Vautrollier, London Burton R (1621) The anatomy of Melancholy. Henry Cripps, Oxford Castelli B (1598) Lexicon Medicum Graeco-Latinum. Pietro Brea, Messina Celsus Aulus C (1478) De Medicina. Nicolaus, Florence Chiaramonti S (1640) De Atrabile Quoadmores Attinet. Nicholas and Jean De La Coste, Paris Fernel J (1607) Universa Medicina. Apud Claudium Marnium et Haeredes Ioannis Aubrii, Frankfurt Ficino M (1489) De triplici vita. Florence Galenus (1541) Opera Quae Extant Omnia. Giunti, Venice Hippocrates (1526) Omnia Opera. Aldus, Venice Plater F (1609) Tractatus de Functionum Laesionibus, in Praxeos seu de Cosgnoscendis, Praedicendis, Praecavendis Curandisque Hominis Affectibus. Conrad Waldchirk, Basle Melancholia Secondary Literature Aegineta P (1844–1847) The seven books of Paulus Aegineta, 3 vols (trans: Francis Adams). Sydenham Society, London Ahonen M (2014) Mental disorders in ancient philosophy. Springer, New York/Dordrecht/London Aristotle (1937) Problems 22-38 (trans: Hett W.S.. Loeb, William Heinemann, London Bigotti F (2019) Physiology of the soul. Mind, body, and matter in the galenic tradition of the late Renaissance (1550–1630). Brepols, Turnhout Hippocrates (1931), Nature of man. Hippocrates, vol IV (trans: Jones WHS). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA/London Klibansky et al (1979) Saturn and the Melancholy. Studies in the history of natural philosophy, religion and art. Klaus Reprint, Nendeln Nutton V (2004) Ancient medicine. Routledge, London Radden J (2000) The nature of Melancholy. Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York, From Aristotle to Kristeva