Five-minute digest
The Anatomy of Melancholy
Summary
The Anatomy of Melancholy presents itself as a medical treatise, laid out in the scholastic manner of partitions, sections, members and subsections, on 'what it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it'. It is also an encyclopedia of Renaissance learning, a compendium of quotation from more than a thousand authors, a satire on human folly, and a consolation for its author and readers. Burton writes as Democritus Junior, heir to the laughing philosopher of Abdera, who in Hippocrates' legendary letter was found dissecting animals to discover the seat of black bile. The long preface, Democritus Junior to the Reader, explains that he writes of melancholy to avoid melancholy, confesses that Saturn ruled his birth, apologises for an unpolished book licked into shape like a bear's cub, and argues that the whole world is mad: kingdoms, professions, lovers and scholars alike. It ends with a sketch of his own utopia. The First Partition defines melancholy, following ancient and Renaissance physicians, as a kind of dotage without fever, accompanied by fear and sadness without apparent cause, and distinguishes passing melancholy dispositions, which are the common lot of mortals, from the settled disease. A digression of anatomy explains humours, spirits and faculties. Burton then catalogues causes: God and devils, witches and stars, old age, heredity, bad diet, retention and evacuation, bad air, too much or too little exercise, solitariness and idleness, sleeplessness, the passions of sorrow, fear, shame, envy, ambition and avarice, and overmuch study, with a famous digression on the misery of scholars. Symptoms of body and mind follow, including delusions of being made of glass or butter, and prognostics end with the problem of suicide. The Second Partition turns to cure. Unlawful remedies from magicians are rejected; lawful ones come from God, the physician and the patient's cooperation. Burton reviews the six non-natural things of Galenic medicine (diet, air, exercise, sleep, evacuation and the passions), with a soaring digression on the air that ranges across cosmology and geography, and recommends music, mirth, friendship and study. A long Consolatory Digression answers every discontent from poverty to death. Pharmacy follows, from borage and hellebore to bloodletting, opiates for sleep and the ambivalent praise of tobacco. The Third Partition treats love-melancholy, its causes, symptoms and cures, then jealousy, and finally religious melancholy, from superstition to despair, closing with the precept that sums up the whole: be not solitary, be not idle. Burton revised the book through six editions, expanding it from about 350,000 to more than half a million words.
Top Lessons
Ordinary sorrow and clinical melancholy are not the same
Burton distinguishes melancholy dispositions, which no mortal escapes, from melancholy as a settled disease of fear and sadness without cause. The distinction anticipates modern debates about where normal sadness ends and depressive disorder begins.
Writing as self-treatment
Burton says he wrote of melancholy to be busy and avoid it, and his endless revision of the book reads as a lifelong therapeutic practice. The Anatomy is an early example of a sufferer turning his condition into a field of study.
Causes are many, and most of them are ordinary
Alongside demons and stars, Burton lists diet, sleep, solitude, idleness, poverty, grief, ambition and too much study. His catalogue resembles a modern biopsychosocial account, in which habits, relationships and circumstances matter as much as bodily humours.
Every remedy has a dose
Burton praises music, mirth and company, recommends opiates for sleeplessness, and calls tobacco a sovereign remedy and in the same breath a devilish ruin of body and soul. His pharmacology is humoral, but his sense that the same agent heals or harms by use is permanently relevant.
Be not solitary, be not idle
After half a million words, Burton reduces his advice to two precepts against isolation and inactivity. The simplicity of the conclusion, after so much learning, is both comic and genuinely wise, and it echoes modern behavioural activation and social prescribing.
Verified Quotes
“All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy”
“I am not poor, I am not rich; nihil est, nihil deest, I have little, I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower”
“I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy. There is no greater cause of melancholy than idleness, no better cure than business”
“A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself”
“I had not time to lick it into form, as she doth her young ones”
“Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality”
“The common sort define it to be a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions, fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion”
“puts study, contemplation, and continual meditation, as an especial cause of madness”
“one supposeth himself to be a dog, cock, bear, horse, glass, butter, &c”
“Musica est mentis medicina moestae, a roaring-meg against melancholy, to rear and revive the languishing soul”
“Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases”
“but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul”
“Waking, by reason of their continual cares, fears, sorrows, dry brains, is a symptom that much crucifies melancholy men, and must therefore be speedily helped, and sleep by all means procured”
“observe this short precept, give not way to solitariness and idleness. Be not solitary, be not idle”
Medical Lens
The Anatomy is the central English text in the pre-modern history of depression and one of the richest sources for Renaissance psychiatry, pharmacology and therapeutics. Its definition of melancholy as fear and sadness without cause, its distinction between normal sorrow and disease, and its catalogue of causes (heredity, diet, sleep loss, isolation, idleness, bereavement, poverty, overwork, study) invite comparison with modern accounts of mood disorder, though its framework is Galenic humoralism, astrology and theology. Its therapeutics span the six non-naturals, music therapy, social and occupational remedies, a pharmacopoeia including hellebore, borage, antimony, opiates and tobacco, bloodletting, and pastoral counsel. It is also a key source for love-sickness as a medical diagnosis, for religious melancholy and scrupulosity, and for despair and suicide. Burton's frank account of his own melancholy, and Anthony Wood's later report of a rumour that he hastened his own death to fulfil an astrological prediction, should be treated as biography and hearsay, not as diagnosis.
- Democritus Junior to the Reader
Burton's confession of melancholy, his account of writing as occupation against it, and the satirical argument that the whole world is mad.
- Part. 1, Sect. 1, Memb. 1, Subs. 4–5; Memb. 3, Subs. 1
Distinctions between madness, frenzy, melancholy as disposition and melancholy as habit, and the definition of melancholy as dotage without fever, with fear and sadness.
- Part. 1, Sect. 2, Memb. 2, Subs. 5–7
Bad air, immoderate exercise, solitariness and idleness, and disordered sleeping and waking as causes of melancholy.
- Part. 1, Sect. 2, Memb. 3, Subs. 15
Overmuch study as a cause of madness, with the digression on the misery of scholars and why the Muses are melancholy.
- Part. 1, Sect. 3, Memb. 1, Subs. 2; Memb. 2
Symptoms in the mind: fear, sorrow, suspicion, jealousy, fixed delusions such as believing oneself made of glass, and the windy hypochondriacal melancholy.
- Part. 1, Sect. 4, Memb. 1
Prognostics of melancholy, including Burton's discussion of suicide among melancholics and the question of how such deaths should be judged.
- Part. 2, Sect. 2, Memb. 6, Subs. 3–4
Music, mirth, merry company and fair objects as remedies for a sorrowful heart, including a cup of strong drink.
- Part. 2, Sect. 4, Memb. 2, Subs. 1
Emetic simples, hellebore and antimony, and the double-edged praise and condemnation of tobacco.
- Part. 2, Sect. 5, Memb. 1, Subs. 2 and 6
Bloodletting for melancholy; correctors of insomnia and fearful dreams using poppy, mandrake, henbane, nightshade, hemp-seed and opiates.
- Part. 3, Sect. 2
Heroical or love-melancholy treated as a disease, with symptoms (wasting, sleeplessness, sighing) and cures from diet and labour to marriage.
- Part. 3, Sect. 4, Memb. 2, Subs. 2–6
Religious despair: definitions, causes in the devil, melancholy and terrifying preaching, symptoms of fear and anxiety, prognosis toward violent death, and cure by physic and good counsel.