The Anatomy of Melancholy. Robert Burton
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confirms the truth of it in weak and old persons, especially such as have lived in action all their lives, had great employment, much business, much command, and many servants to oversee, and leave off ex abrupto; as [1304]Charles the Fifth did to King Philip, resign up all on a sudden; they are overcome with melancholy in an instant: or if they do continue in such courses, they dote at last, (senex bis puer,) and are not able to manage their estates through common infirmities incident in their age; full of ache, sorrow and grief, children again, dizzards, they carl many times as they sit, and talk to themselves, they are angry, waspish, displeased with every thing, "suspicious of all, wayward, covetous, hard" (saith Tully,) "self-willed, superstitious, self-conceited, braggers and admirers of themselves," as [1305]Balthazar Castilio hath truly noted of them. [1306]This natural infirmity is most eminent in old women, and such as are poor, solitary, live in most base esteem and beggary, or such as are witches; insomuch that Wierus, Baptista Porta, Ulricus Molitor, Edwicus, do refer all that witches are said to do, to imagination alone, and this humour of melancholy. And whereas it is controverted, whether they can bewitch cattle to death, ride in the air upon a cowl-staff out of a chimney-top, transform themselves into cats, dogs, &c., translate bodies from place to place, meet in companies, and dance, as they do, or have carnal copulation with the devil, they ascribe all to this redundant melancholy, which domineers in them, to [1307] somniferous potions, and natural causes, the devil's policy. Non laedunt omnino (saith Wierus) aut quid mirum faciunt, (de Lamiis, lib. 3. cap. 36), ut putatur, solam vitiatam habent phantasiam; they do no such wonders at all, only their [1308]brains are crazed. [1309]"They think they are witches, and can do hurt, but do not." But this opinion Bodine, Erastus, Danaeus, Scribanius, Sebastian Michaelis, Campanella de Sensu rerum, lib. 4. cap. 9. [1310]Dandinus the Jesuit, lib. 2. de Animae explode; [1311]Cicogna confutes at large. That witches are melancholy, they deny not, but not out of corrupt phantasy alone, so to delude themselves and others, or to produce such effects.
SUBSECT. VI.—Parents a cause by Propagation.
That other inward inbred cause of Melancholy is our temperature, in whole or part, which we receive from our parents, which [1312]Fernelius calls Praeter naturam, or unnatural, it being an hereditary disease; for as he justifies [1313]Quale parentum maxime patris semen obtigerit, tales evadunt similares spermaticaeque paries, quocunque etiam morbo Pater quum generat tenetur, cum semine transfert, in Prolem; such as the temperature of the father is, such is the son's, and look what disease the father had when he begot him, his son will have after him; [1314]"and is as well inheritor of his infirmities, as of his lands. And where the complexion and constitution of the father is corrupt, there ([1315]saith Roger Bacon) the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and so the corruption is derived from the father to the son." Now this doth not so much appear in the composition of the body, according to that of Hippocrates, [1316]"in habit, proportion, scars, and other lineaments; but in manners and conditions of the mind," Et patrum in natos abeunt cum semine mores.
Seleucus had an anchor on his thigh, so had his posterity, as Trogus records, lib. 15. Lepidus, in Pliny l. 7. c. 17, was purblind, so was his son. That famous family of Aenobarbi were known of old, and so surnamed from their red beards; the Austrian lip, and those Indian flat noses are propagated, the Bavarian chin, and goggle eyes amongst the Jews, as [1317] Buxtorfius observes; their voice, pace, gesture, looks, are likewise derived with all the rest of their conditions and infirmities; such a mother, such a daughter; their very [1318]affections Lemnius contends "to follow their seed, and the malice and bad conditions of children are many times wholly to be imputed to their parents;" I need not therefore make any doubt of Melancholy, but that it is an hereditary disease. [1319] Paracelsus in express words affirms it, lib. de morb. amentium to. 4. tr. 1; so doth [1320]Crato in an Epistle of his to Monavius. So doth Bruno Seidelius in his book de morbo incurab. Montaltus proves, cap. 11, out of Hippocrates and Plutarch, that such hereditary dispositions are frequent, et hanc (inquit) fieri reor ob participatam melancholicam intemperantiam (speaking of a patient) I think he became so by participation of Melancholy. Daniel Sennertus, lib. 1. part 2. cap. 9, will have his melancholy constitution derived not only from the father to the son, but to the whole family sometimes; Quandoque totis familiis hereditativam, [1321]Forestus, in his medicinal observations, illustrates this point, with an example of a merchant, his patient, that had this infirmity by inheritance; so doth Rodericus a Fonseca, tom. 1. consul. 69, by an instance of a young man that was so affected ex matre melancholica, had a melancholy mother, et victu melancholico, and bad diet together. Ludovicus Mercatus, a Spanish physician, in that excellent Tract which he hath lately written of hereditary diseases, tom. 2. oper. lib. 5, reckons up leprosy, as those [1322]Galbots in Gascony, hereditary lepers, pox, stone, gout, epilepsy, &c. Amongst the rest, this and madness after a set time comes to many, which he calls a miraculous thing in nature, and sticks for ever to them as an incurable habit. And that which is more to be wondered at, it skips in some families the father, and goes to the son, [1323]"or takes every other, and sometimes every third in a lineal descent, and doth not always produce the same, but some like, and a symbolizing disease." These secondary causes hence derived, are commonly so powerful, that (as [1324]Wolfius holds) saepe mutant decreta siderum, they do often alter the primary causes, and decrees of the heavens. For these reasons, belike, the Church and commonwealth, human and Divine laws, have conspired to avoid hereditary diseases, forbidding such marriages as are any whit allied; and as Mercatus adviseth all families to take such, si fieri possit quae maxime distant natura, and to make choice of those that are most differing in complexion from them; if they love their own, and respect the common good. And sure, I think, it hath been ordered by God's especial providence, that in all ages there should be (as usually there is) once in [1325]600 years, a transmigration of nations, to amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our land, and that there should be as it were an inundation of those northern Goths and Vandals, and many such like people which came out of that continent of Scandia and Sarmatia (as some suppose) and overran, as a deluge, most part of Europe and Africa, to alter for our good, our complexions, which were much defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemperance we had contracted. A sound generation of strong and able men were sent amongst us, as those northern men usually are, innocuous, free from riot, and free from diseases; to qualify and make us as those poor naked Indians are generally at this day; and those about Brazil (as a late [1326]writer observes), in the Isle of Maragnan, free from all hereditary diseases, or other contagion, whereas without help of physic they live commonly 120 years or more, as in the Orcades and many other places. Such are the common effects of temperance and intemperance, but I will descend to particular, and show by what means, and by whom especially, this infirmity is derived unto us.
Filii ex senibus nati, raro sunt firmi temperamenti, old men's children are seldom of a good temperament, as Scoltzius supposeth, consult. 177, and therefore most apt to this disease; and as [1327]Levinus Lemnius farther adds, old men beget most part wayward, peevish, sad, melancholy sons, and seldom merry. He that begets a child on a full stomach, will either have a sick child, or a crazed son (as [1328]Cardan thinks), contradict. med. lib. 1. contradict. 18, or if the parents be sick, or have any great pain of the head, or megrim, headache, (Hieronymus Wolfius [1329]doth instance in a child of Sebastian Castalio's); if a drunken man get a child, it will never likely have a good brain, as Gellius argues, lib. 12. cap. 1. Ebrii gignunt Ebrios, one drunkard begets another, saith [1330]Plutarch, symp. lib. 1. quest. 5, whose sentence [1331]Lemnius approves, l. 1. c. 4. Alsarius Crutius, Gen. de qui sit med. cent. 3. fol. 182. Macrobius, lib. 1. Avicenna, lib. 3. Fen. 21. Tract 1. cap. 8, and Aristotle himself, sect. 2. prob. 4, foolish, drunken, or hair-brain women, most part bring forth children like unto themselves, morosos et languidos, and so likewise he that lies with a menstruous woman. Intemperantia veneris, quam in nautis praesertim insectatur [1332] Lemnius, qui uxores ineunt, nulla menstrui decursus ratione habita nec observato interlunio, praecipua causa est, noxia, pernitiosa, concubitum hunc exitialem ideo, et pestiferum vocat. [1333]Rodoricus a Castro Lucitanus, detestantur ad unum omnes medici, tum et quarta luna concepti, infelices plerumque et amentes, deliri, stolidi, morbosi, impuri, invalidi, tetra lue sordidi minime vitales, omnibus bonis corporis atque animi destituti: ad laborem nati, si seniores, inquit Eustathius, ut Hercules, et alii. [1334]Judaei