{"id":5630,"date":"2016-05-26T13:22:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=5630"},"modified":"2016-05-26T13:22:42","modified_gmt":"2016-05-26T18:22:42","slug":"melancholy-phrensie-and-madnesse-oh-my","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vault217.gmu.edu\/?p=5630","title":{"rendered":"Melancholy, Phrensie, and Madnesse, Oh My!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"C0036B25F02_04042\"<\/a>

Burton, Robert, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy<\/em>, PR2223 .A1 1628, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.<\/p><\/div>\n

In the 1600’s, Robert Burton wrote\u00a0Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy<\/em><\/em>, to\u00a0describe illnesses such as “phrensie,” “madnesse,” and lycanthropia or “wolfe madnesse.”<\/p>\n

Melancholy was defined by Burton as an illness that “goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need, sickness, trouble, feare, griefe, passion, perturbation of the mid, any matter of care, discontent, or thought which causes anguish and vexation of the spirits” (Burton\u00a011). Burton also defined a few other “diseases of the minde” which are all to some degree related or a result of melancholy:<\/p>\n

Phrensie – “disease of the mind with continual madnesse or dotage, which hath an acute feaver annexed or else an inflammation of the Braine or the Membranes or\u00a0Kells of it with an accute fever which causeth Madnesse and Dotage”(Burton\u00a0 8).<\/p>\n

Madnesse – “vehement dotage without fever, farre more violent than melancholy. Full of anger and clamor, horrible lookes, actions, gestures, troubling the Patient with farre greater vehemency both of body and minde without all feare and sorroe, with such impetuous force and boldness that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them” (Burton 8).<\/p>\n

Lycanthropia or “Wolfe-madnesse” – “men runne howling about graves and fields in the nights, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves or some such beasts” (Burton 9).<\/p>\n

Some of the causes listed by Burton for melancholy involve witches, devils, sedentary lifestyles, bad diet, quantity of diet, quantity and quality of\u00a0sleep, sorrow, anger, fear, old age, stars, passions, and too much studying.<\/p>\n

Ways to cure melancholy include dietary changes, eating a variety of lean meats, broths, wholesome herbs and drinking plenty of water, not overeating, moderate exercise in fresh and clean air, sleeping two or three hours after dinner in a cool and humid\u00a0room, surrounding yourself with music and merry company, and taking a mixture of simple herbs and vegetables that are appropriate for this disease.<\/p>\n

\"C0036B24F09_01164\"<\/a>

Gunn, John C., Gunn’s New Domestic Physician or Home Book of Health<\/em>, RC81 .G91 1861, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University Libraries.<\/p><\/div>\n

Gunn’s New Domestic Physician<\/em>\u00a0(1861) features a variety of remedies for many illnesses and diseases. A\u00a0few focus on illnesses of the mind such as melancholy, hypochondria, and hysteria. Gunn defines melancholy as the incipient stage or mild degree of madness or mental derangement, and the highest form of hypochondria. A person with melancholy may:<\/p>\n