The Anatomy of Melancholy was written more than 400 years ago, but Robert Burton’s masterpiece is strangely modern. Although it brims with quaint language and Latin quotes, it also resembles a medical textbook: a compendium of the symptoms, causes, prognoses and treatments of human misery.
Take Burton’s discussion of “love-melancholy”. Its symptoms include leanness, loss of appetite, hollow eyes, fear, sorrow, disturbed sleep, suspicion, sighing, moaning, peevishness and pallor, “as one who trod with naked foot upon a snake”. It has dietary, climatic and astrological causes. Burton is not optimistic about recovery, but suggests “good counsel and persuasion” may help.
