The Anatomy of Melancholy: Philosophy Classic. Robert Burton

abhorrent, et apud suos prohibent; et quod Christiani toties leprosi, amentes, tot morbili, impetigines, alphi, psorae, cutis et faciei decolorationes, tam multi morbi epidemici, acerbi, et venenosi sint, in hunc immundum concubitum rejiciunt, et crudeles in pignora vocant, qui quarta, luna profluente hac mensium illuvie concubitum hunc non perhorrescunt. Damnavit olim divina Lex et morte mulctavit hujusmodi homines, Lev. 18, 20, et inde nati, siqui deformes aut mutili, pater dilapidatus, quod non contineret ab [1335] immunda muliere. Gregorius Magnus, petenti Augustino nunquid apud [1336]Britannos hujusmodi concubitum toleraret, severe prohibuit viris suis tum misceri foeminas in consuetis suis menstruis, &c. I spare to English this which I have said. Another cause some give, inordinate diet, as if a man eat garlic, onions, fast overmuch, study too hard, be over-sorrowful, dull, heavy, dejected in mind, perplexed in his thoughts, fearful, &c., "their children" (saith [1337]Cardan subtil. lib. 18) "will be much subject to madness and melancholy; for if the spirits of the brain be fuzzled, or misaffected by such means, at such a time, their children will be fuzzled in the brain: they will be dull, heavy, timorous, discontented all their lives." Some are of opinion, and maintain that paradox or problem, that wise men beget commonly fools; Suidas gives instance in Aristarchus the Grammarian, duos reliquit Filios Aristarchum et Aristachorum, ambos stultos; and which [1338]Erasmus urgeth in his Moria, fools beget wise men. Card. subt. l. 12, gives this cause, Quoniam spiritus sapientum ob studium resolvuntur, et in cerebrum feruntur a corde: because their natural spirits are resolved by study, and turned into animal; drawn from the heart, and those other parts to the brain. Lemnius subscribes to that of Cardan, and assigns this reason, Quod persolvant debitum languide, et obscitanter, unde foetus a parentum generositate desciscit: they pay their debt (as Paul calls it) to their wives remissly, by which means their children are weaklings, and many times idiots and fools.

      Some other causes are given, which properly pertain, and do proceed from the mother: if she be over-dull, heavy, angry, peevish, discontented, and melancholy, not only at the time of conception, but even all the while she carries the child in her womb (saith Fernelius, path. l. 1, 11) her son will be so likewise affected, and worse, as [1339]Lemnius adds, l. 4. c. 7, if she grieve overmuch, be disquieted, or by any casualty be affrighted and terrified by some fearful object, heard or seen, she endangers her child, and spoils the temperature of it; for the strange imagination of a woman works effectually upon her infant, that as Baptista Porta proves, Physiog. caelestis l. 5. c. 2, she leaves a mark upon it, which is most especially seen in such as prodigiously long for such and such meats, the child will love those meats, saith Fernelius, and be addicted to like humours: [1340]"if a great-bellied woman see a hare, her child will often have a harelip," as we call it. Garcaeus, de Judiciis geniturarum, cap. 33, hath a memorable example of one Thomas Nickell, born in the city of Brandeburg, 1551, [1341]"that went reeling and staggering all the days of his life, as if he would fall to the ground, because his mother being great with child saw a drunken man reeling in the street." Such another I find in Martin Wenrichius, com. de ortu monstrorum, c. 17, I saw (saith he) at Wittenberg, in Germany, a citizen that looked like a carcass; I asked him the cause, he replied, [1342]"His mother, when she bore him in her womb, saw a carcass by chance, and was so sore affrighted with it, that ex eo foetus ei assimilatus, from a ghastly impression the child was like it."

      So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our father's defaults; insomuch that as Fernelius truly saith, [1343]"It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for human kind, if only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry." An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land, he will not rear a bull or a horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, Quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum? And how careful then should we be in begetting of our children? In former times some [1344]countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times. Heretofore in Scotland, saith [1345]Hect. Boethius, "if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance having some such disease, she were found to be with child, she with her brood were buried alive:" and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted. A severe doom you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is. For now by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous infirmity or other, when no choice is had, but still the eldest must marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, be they fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust through riot, as he said, [1346]jura haereditario sapere jubentur; they must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, parentes, peremptores; our fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.

      MEMB. II.

      SUBSECT. I.—Bad Diet a cause. Substance. Quality of Meats.

      According to my proposed method, having opened hitherto these secondary causes, which are inbred with us, I must now proceed to the outward and adventitious, which happen unto us after we are born. And those are either evident, remote, or inward, antecedent, and the nearest: continent causes some call them. These outward, remote, precedent causes are subdivided again into necessary and not necessary. Necessary (because we cannot avoid them, but they will alter us, as they are used, or abused) are those six non-natural things, so much spoken of amongst physicians, which are principal causes of this disease. For almost in every consultation, whereas they shall come to speak of the causes, the fault is found, and this most part objected to the patient; Peccavit circa res sex non naturales: he hath still offended in one of those six. Montanus, consil. 22, consulted about a melancholy Jew, gives that sentence, so did Frisemelica in the same place; and in his 244 counsel, censuring a melancholy soldier, assigns that reason of his malady, [1347]"he offended in all those six non-natural things, which were the outward causes, from which came those inward obstructions;" and so in the rest.

      These six non-natural things are diet, retention and evacuation, which are more material than the other because they make new matter, or else are conversant in keeping or expelling of it. The other four are air, exercise, sleeping, waking, and perturbations of the mind, which only alter the matter. The first of these is diet, which consists in meat and drink, and causeth melancholy, as it offends in substance, or accidents, that is, quantity, quality, or the like. And well it may be called a material cause, since that, as [1348]Fernelius holds, "it hath such a power in begetting of diseases, and yields the matter and sustenance of them; for neither air, nor perturbations, nor any of those other evident causes take place, or work this effect, except the constitution of body, and preparation of humours, do concur. That a man may say, this diet is the mother of diseases, let the father be what he will, and from this alone, melancholy and frequent other maladies arise." Many physicians, I confess, have written copious volumes of this one subject, of the nature and qualities of all manner of meats; as namely, Galen, Isaac the Jew, Halyabbas, Avicenna, Mesue, also four Arabians, Gordonius, Villanovanus, Wecker, Johannes Bruerinus, sitologia de Esculentis et Poculentis, Michael Savanarola, Tract 2. c. 8, Anthony Fumanellus, lib. de regimine senum, Curio in his comment on Schola Salerna, Godefridus Steckius arte med., Marcilius Cognatus, Ficinus, Ranzovius, Fonseca, Lessius, Magninus, regim. sanitatis, Frietagius, Hugo Fridevallius, &c., besides many other in [1349]English, and almost every peculiar physician, discourseth at large of all peculiar meats in his chapter of melancholy: yet because these books are not at hand to every man, I will briefly touch what kind of meats engender this humour, through their several species, and which are to be avoided. How they alter and change the matter, spirits first, and after humours, by which we are preserved, and the constitution