Microcosmus Hypochondriacus

curiosities about early modern medicine and history

Scholars, Beware of Over-Studying. An Early Modern Case-History

Working at the Public Library in Geneva, I am surrounded by young undergraduates fervently reading, cross-marking & stabilo-bossing their coursework. I am amazed at how motivated and determined they are (possibly taking advantage of mild cognitive neuro enhancers* like italian coffee, or Rivella, the Swiss soft-drink and national treasure), in spite of the occasional side-line activities ranging from nose-blowing, non-verbal micro-talking to post-modernly incomprehensible courting & flirting.

But I wonder if they are aware how dangerous over-studying can become? Here is the story of a student who must have abused his daily dose of the early modern version of Aderal:

I have read that a young scholler [student] being in his studie, was taken with a strange imagination: for he imagined that his nose was so great and so long, as that he durst [dared] not stirre out of his place, lest he should dash it against something: and the more he was dealt with and disswaded, so much the more did he confirme himselfe in his opinion.

In the end a Phisition [Physician] having taken a great piece of flesh, and holding it in his hand secretly, assured him that he would heale him by and by, and that he must needes take away this great nose: and so upon the suddaine pinching his nose a little, and cutting the piece of flesh which he had, he made him believe that his great nose was cut away.

Excerpted from André Du Laurens, Discours des maladies mélancoliques (1594), trans. R. Surphlet, London, F. Klingston, 1599.


Robert Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) dedicated a long subsection of his First Partition to the excessive study as a serious cause of the melancholy disease. The title is self-explanatory:

Love of Learning, or overmuch study. With a digression of the misery of Scholars, and why the Muses are melancholy.

R. Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition 1, Section 2, Member 3, Subsection 15, available on-line via an 1807 edition digitized by Google Books.

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*On a sideline, and more seriously, problems brought by modern day cognitive neuro enhancers were discussed in an excellent New Yorker piece by Margaret Talbot : Brain Gain. The underworld of "neuroenhancing" drugs (with some useful comments by Jonah Lehrer on his blog).