EXHIBITS
The Anatomy of Melancholy: Common Melancholy: Cures
Cures for depression that were commonly acknowledged in the Renaissance differed in many ways from modern cures.
A commonly-recognized cure was praying to God for healing. Burton's perspective of it was "[a]s we must pray for health of body and mind, so we must use our utmost endeavours to preserve and continue it. Some kind of devils are not cast out but by fasting and prayer, and both necessarily required, not one without the other. For all the physic we can use, art, excellent industry, is to no purpose without calling upon God, nil juvat immensos Cratero promittere montes: it is in vain to seek for help, run, ride, except God bless us" [1].
While it was culturally accepted to seek healing from God, it was less established whether that seeking of divine assistance extended to saints. Burton described this and the argument towards praying to saints by saying, "[t]hat we must pray to God, no man doubts; but whether we should pray to saints in such cases, or whether they can do us any good, it may be lawfully controverted. Whether their images, shrines, relics, consecrated things, holy water, medals, benedictions, those divine amulets, holy exorcisms, and the sign of the cross, be available in this disease? The papists on the one side stiffly maintain how many melancholy, mad, demoniacal persons are daily cured at St. Anthony's Church in Padua, at St. Vitus' in Germany, by our Lady of Loretto in Italy, our Lady of Sichem in the Low Countries..." [2]. Burton argued on the contrary by saying, "[b]ut we on the other side seek to God alone. We say with David, Psal. xlvi. 1. "God is our hope and strength, and help in trouble, ready to be found." For their catalogue of examples, we make no other answer, but that they are false fictions, or diabolical illusions, counterfeit miracles" [3].
While medicine is universally understood to be anything that is taken to help relieve illness or pain, how medicines functioned in the Renaissance was much different than how they function now. A type of medicine that was prevalent in that era were "purgers." Burton describes purgers as "either simple or compound, and that gently, or violently, purging upward or downward" [4]. These purgers, regardless of the direction of the purging, were believed to balance the humor levels by purging those that exceeded normal levels. Some effective upward purgers that were listed by Burton included asarum, laurel, scilla, white hellebore, antimony, and tobacco. Some effective downward purgers included polypody, epithyme, mirabolanes, half-boiled cabbage, aloe, and black hellebore.
Bloodletting was a common practice in the era of the Renaissance. Burton's summary of bloodletting was that it "is promiscuously used before and after physic, commonly before, and upon occasion is often reiterated, if there be any need at least of it. For Galen, and many others, make a doubt of bleeding at all in this kind of head-melancholy. If the malady, saith Piso, cap. 23. and Altomarus, cap. 7. Fuchsius, cap. 33. 'shall proceed primarily from the misaffected brain, the patient in such case shall not need at all to bleed, except the blood otherwise abound, the veins be full, inflamed blood, and the party ready to run mad.' In immaterial melancholy, which especially comes from a cold distemperature of spirits, Hercules de Saxonia, cap. 17. will not admit of phlebotomy"[5].
As is common in modern efforts to cure depression, counseling was considered a cure for common melancholy. Burton described counseling as "the best thing in the world, as Seneca therefore adviseth in such a case, 'to get a trusty friend, to whom we may freely and sincerely pour out our secrets; nothing so delighteth and easeth the mind, as when we have a prepared bosom, to which our secrets may descend, of whose conscience we are assured as our own, whose speech may ease our succourless estate, counsel relieve, mirth expel our mourning, and whose very sight may be acceptable unto us.' It was the counsel which that politic Comineus gave to all princes, and others distressed in mind, by occasion of Charles Duke of Burgundy, that was much perplexed, 'first to pray to God, and lay himself open to him, and then to some special friend, whom we hold most dear, to tell all our grievances to him; nothing so forcible to strengthen, recreate, and heal the wounded soul of a miserable man'" [6]. Continuing on this topic, Burton explained that "[w]hen the patient of himself is not able to resist, or overcome these heart-eating passions, his friends or physician must be ready to supply that which is wanting" [7].
