Microcosmus Hypochondriacus

curiosities about early modern medicine and history

Change of air

Now that I arrived in Stanford, ahead of the Digital Humanities 2011 conference, I remembered how Robert Burton once advised the change of air, or travelling, as a treatment for melancholy:

Although our ordinary air be good by nature or art, yet it is not amiss still to alter it; no better physick [medication] for a melancholy man than change of air and variety of places, to travel abroad and see fashions. (...) No man (...) can be such a stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities, towns, rivers, will not affect. (...) For peregrination charmes our senses with such unspeakable and sweet variety, that some count him unhappy that never travelled, a kind of prisoner, and pity his case, that from his cradle to his old age beholds the same still;

(Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Partition 2, Sect. 2, Member 3)

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).

 

 

Malachias Geiger 1652 book on Melancholy

In 1652 a German phyisican published a most extraordinary book on melancholy. It went beyond medicine and aimed at gathering together all that was known in connection to this illness:

Malachia Geiger, Microcosmus hypochondriacus, sive de Melancholia Hypochondriaca Tractatus, Monachii, apud L. Straub, 1652. [a digital copy is available at the BIUM digital library]

Hypochondria was considered to be an abdominal illness caused by an overabundance or plethora of black bile. This book gathers around the complex notion of melancholia a multitude of details about medicine, alchemy natural sciences, literature and mythology. It begins as a medicine book and evolves into a much more complex discourse. It represents the German couterpart to Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.

Dealing with Early Modern curiosities about medicine and history, not knowing yet for which language I shall settle (French or English), I have  thus decided to use Microcosmus hypochondriacus as the title of my research blog. I'll be back with more details about this book.


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