EXHIBITS
The Anatomy of Melancholy: Common Melancholy: Symptoms
Robert Burton organized the symptoms of common melancholy relating to how they affect different parts of the body. In regards to the symptoms of melancholy in the body, Burton described that "[i]f the heart, brain, liver, spleen, be misaffected, as usually they are, many inconveniences proceed from them, many diseases accompany, as incubus, apoplexy, epilepsy, vertigo, those frequent wakings and terrible dreams, intempestive laughing, weeping, sighing, sobbing, bashfulness, blushing, trembling, sweating, swooning, &c. All their senses are troubled, they think they see, hear, smell, and touch that which they do not..." [1].
Regarding melancholy of the mind, Burton lists off several symptoms, including being fearful, jealous, inconstant, passionate, amorous, humorous, bashful, and solitary.
The foundation of medicine in Burton's lifetime revolved around the four humors of the body. Defined, the "humours were considered to be causes of illness in a long medical tradition that preceded Hippocrates (Smith, 1930). Four of the humours that were distinguished were phlegm, black bile. yellow bile and blood. There were other humours as well but these four came to be regarded as primary... Excesses or deficiencies in the humours caused illness" [2]. Regarding them, Burton describes in great detail the effects that individual humors cause with melancholy.
For blood, "[t]hey are much inclined to laughter, witty and merry, conceited in discourse, pleasant, if they be not far gone, much given to music, dancing, and to be in women's company. They meditate wholly on such things, and think they see or hear plays, dancing, and such-like sports (free from all fear and sorrow, as Hercules de Saxonia supposeth)" [3].
For phlegm, "it stirs up dull symptoms, and a kind of stupidity, or impassionate hurt: they are sleepy, saith Savanarola, dull, slow, cold, blockish..." [4].
For yellow bile, "they are bold and impudent, and of a more harebrain disposition, apt to quarrel, and think of such things, battles, combats, and their manhood, furious; impatient in discourse, stiff, irrefragable and prodigious in their tenets; and if they be moved, most violent, outrageous, ready to disgrace, provoke any, to kill themselves and others; Arnoldus adds, stark mad by fits, 'they sleep little, their urine is subtile and fiery. (Guianerius.) In their fits you shall hear them speak all manner of languages, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, that never were taught or knew them before.'" [5].
Regarding black bile, "those men, saith Avicenna, 'are usually sad and solitary, and that continually, and in excess, more than ordinarily suspicious, more fearful, and have long, sore, and most corrupt imaginations;' cold and black, bashful, and so solitary, that as Arnoldus writes, 'they will endure no company, they dream of graves still, and dead men, and think themselves bewitched or dead:' if it be extreme, they think they hear hideous noises, see and talk 'with black men, and converse familiarly with devils, and such strange chimeras and visions' (Gordonius), or that they are possessed by them, that somebody talks to them, or within them" [6].
