Editing Melancholia (section)

==Early history==
[[File:Albrecht Dürer - Melencolia I - Google Art Project ( AGDdr3EHmNGyA).jpg|thumb|''[[Melencolia I]]'' by [[Albrecht Dürer]], 1514]]
[[File:Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1626, 2nd edition.jpg|thumb|[[Book frontispiece|Frontispiece]] for the 1628 3rd edition of ''[[The Anatomy of Melancholy]]'']]

The name "melancholia" comes from the old medical belief of the four [[humourism|humours]]: disease or ailment being caused by an imbalance in one or more of the four basic bodily liquids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humor in a particular person. According to [[Hippocrates]] and subsequent tradition, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile,<ref>Hippocrates, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0251%3Atext%3DAer.%3Asection%3D10 ''De aere aquis et locis'', 10.103] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220601220934/https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0251%3Atext%3DAer.%3Asection%3D10 |date=2022-06-01 }}, on Perseus Digital Library</ref> hence the name, which means "black bile", from [[Ancient Greek]] μέλας ({{Transliteration|grc|melas}}), "dark, black",<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dme%2Flas μέλας] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605183904/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dme%2Flas |date=2011-06-05 }},
Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library</ref> and χολή ({{Transliteration|grc|kholé}}), "bile";<ref>[https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dxolh%2F χολή] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220708042944/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0057%3Aentry%3Dxolh%2F |date=2022-07-08 }}, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek–English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library</ref> a person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a ''melancholic'' disposition. In the complex elaboration of humorist theory, it was associated with the earth from the [[Four Elements]], the season of autumn, the [[spleen]] as the originating organ and cold and dry as related qualities. In [[astrology]] it showed the influence of [[Saturn]], hence the related adjective ''saturnine''.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />

Melancholia was described as a distinct [[History of depression|disease]] with particular mental and physical symptoms in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates, in his ''[[s:Aphorisms|Aphorisms]]'', characterized all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" as being symptomatic of melancholia.<ref name=":2">Hippocrates, ''Aphorisms'', Section 6.23</ref> Other symptoms mentioned by Hippocrates include: poor appetite, [[abulia]], sleeplessness, irritability, agitation.<ref name=":3">Epidemics, III, 16 cases, case II</ref> The Hippocratic clinical description of melancholia shows significant overlaps with contemporary nosography of depressive syndromes (6 symptoms out of the 9 included in DSM <ref>American Psychiatric Association (2013) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fifth Edition. APA, Washington DC., pp. 160–161.</ref> diagnostic criteria for a Major Depressive).<ref>{{Cite book |last=Azzone |first=Paolo |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/816563937 |title=Depression as a psychoanalytic problem |date=2013 |publisher=University Press of America |isbn=978-0-7618-6041-9 |location=Lanham, Md |oclc=816563937}}</ref>

In [[Mental illness in ancient Rome|ancient Rome]], [[Galen]] added "fixed delusions" to the set of symptoms listed by Hippocrates. Galen also believed that melancholia caused cancer.<ref name=Coffee>{{cite book|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=oI6LtxfEKkwC&q=melancholia+%22gall+bladder%22&pg=PA322|title= Coffee: Physiology|first1= R. J.|last1= Clarke|first2= R.|last2= Macrae|year= 1988|publisher= Springer Science & Business Media|via= Google Books|isbn= 978-1-85166-186-2|access-date= 2022-08-28|archive-date= 2022-07-03|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20220703235357/https://books.google.com/books?id=oI6LtxfEKkwC&q=melancholia+%22gall+bladder%22&pg=PA322|url-status= live}}</ref> [[Aretaeus of Cappadocia]], in turn, believed that melancholia involved both a state of anguish, and a delusion.<ref name=auto/> In the 10th century [[Persian people|Persian]] physician [[Abu Bakr Rabee Ibn Ahmad Al-Akhawyni Bokhari|Al-Akhawayni Bokhari]] described melancholia as a [[Chronic condition|chronic]] illness caused by the impact of black bile on the brain.<ref name=My4>{{cite journal|last1=Delfaridi|first1=Behnam|title=Melancholia in Medieval Persian Literature: The View of Hidayat of Al-Akhawayni.|journal=World Journal of Psychiatry|date=2014|pages=37–41|doi=10.5498/wjp.v4.i2.37|volume=4|issue=2|pmc=4087154|pmid=25019055 |doi-access=free }}</ref> He described melancholia's initial clinical manifestations as "suffering from an unexplained fear, inability to answer questions or providing false answers, self-laughing and self-crying and speaking meaninglessly, yet with no fever."<ref name="Jala">{{cite book |last=Matini |first=Jalal|title= Hedayat al-Motaallemin fi Tebb |publisher= University Press, Mashhad |year= 1965 }}</ref>

In Middle-Ages Europe, the humoral, somatic paradigm for understanding sustained sadness lost primacy in front of the prevailing religious perspective.<ref name=":4">Azzone P. (2013) pp. 23ff.</ref><ref name=":5">Azzone P (2012) Sin of Sadness: Acedia vel Tristitia Between Sociocultural Conditioning and Psychological Dynamics of Negative Emotions. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 31: 50–64.</ref> Sadness came to be a vice (λύπη in the Greek vice list by Evagrius Ponticus,<ref>Guillamont A., Guillamont C. (Eds.) (1971) Évagre le Pontique. Traité pratique ou le moine, 2 VV.. Sources Chrétiennes 170–171, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris</ref> tristitia vel acidia in the 7 vice list by [[Pope Gregory I]]).<ref>Gregorius Magnus. Moralia in Iob. In J.-P. Migne (Ed.) Patrologiae Latinae cursus completus (Vol. 75, col. 509D – Vol. 76, col. 782AG)</ref> When a patient could not be cured of the disease it was thought that the melancholia was a result of [[demonic possession]].<ref name=":6">{{cite web|url=http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/projects/pom/storyReader$7.html|title=18th-Century Theories of Melancholy & Hypochondria|website=loki.stockton.edu|access-date=2022-08-28|archive-date=2021-01-25|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210125034701/http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/projects/pom/storyReader$7.html|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>Farmer, Hugh. [https://archive.org/stream/essayondemonia00farm#page/56/mode/2up An essay on demoniacs of the New Testament] 56 (1818)</ref>

In his study of French and Burgundian courtly culture, [[Johan Huizinga]]<ref>Huizinga, "Pessimism and the ideal of the sublime life", ''[[The Autumn of the Middle Ages|The Waning of the Middle Ages]]'', 1924:22ff.</ref> noted that "at the close of the Middle Ages, a sombre melancholy weighs on people's souls." In chronicles, poems, sermons, even in legal documents, an immense sadness, a note of despair and a fashionable sense of suffering and deliquescence at the approaching end of times, suffuses court poets and chroniclers alike: Huizinga quotes instances in the ballads of [[Eustache Deschamps]], "monotonous and gloomy variations of the same dismal theme", and in [[Georges Chastellain]]'s prologue to his Burgundian chronicle,<ref>"I, man of sadness, born in an eclipse of darkness, and thick fogs of lamentation".</ref> and in the late 15th-century poetry of [[Jean Meschinot]]. Ideas of reflection and the workings of imagination are blended in the term ''merencolie'', embodying for contemporaries "a tendency", observes Huizinga, "to identify all serious occupation of the mind with sadness".<ref>Huizinga 1924:25.</ref>

Painters were considered by [[Vasari]] and other writers to be especially prone to melancholy by the nature of their work, sometimes with good effects for their art in increased sensitivity and use of fantasy. Among those of his contemporaries so characterised by Vasari were [[Pontormo]] and [[Parmigianino]], but he does not use the term of [[Michelangelo]], who used it, perhaps not very seriously, of himself.<ref>Britton, Piers, ''"Mio malinchonico, o vero... mio pazzo": Michelangelo, Vasari, and the Problem of Artists' Melancholy in Sixteenth-Century Italy'', ''The Sixteenth Century Journal'', Vol. 34, No. 3 (Fall, 2003), pp. 653–675, {{doi|10.2307/20061528}}, {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201114100118/https://www.jstor.org/stable/20061528 |date=2020-11-14 }}</ref> A famous [[allegory|allegorical]] [[engraving]] by [[Albrecht Dürer]] is entitled ''[[Melencolia I]]''. This engraving has been interpreted as portraying melancholia as the state of waiting for inspiration to strike, and not necessarily as a depressive affliction. Amongst other allegorical symbols, the picture includes a [[magic square]] and a truncated [[rhombohedron]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DuerersSolid.html|title=Dürer's Solid|first=Eric W.|last=Weisstein|website=mathworld.wolfram.com|access-date=2022-08-28|archive-date=2022-01-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220130210426/https://mathworld.wolfram.com/DuerersSolid.html|url-status=live}}</ref> The image in turn inspired a passage in ''[[The City of Dreadful Night]]'' by [[James Thomson (B.V.)]], and, a few years later, a sonnet by [[Edward Dowden]].

The most extended treatment of melancholia comes from [[Robert Burton (scholar)|Robert Burton]], whose ''[[The Anatomy of Melancholy]]'' (1621) treats the subject from both a literary and a medical [[perspective (cognitive)|perspective]]. His concept of melancholia includes all mental illness, which he divides into different types. Burton wrote in the 17th century that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness.<ref>Cf. ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', subsection 3, on and after line 3480, "Music a Remedy":</ref>
{{blockquote|But to leave all declamatory speeches in praise of divine music, I will confine myself to my proper subject: besides that excellent power it hath to expel many other diseases, it is a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy, and will drive away the devil himself. Canus, a Rhodian fiddler, in Philostratus, when Apollonius was inquisitive to know what he could do with his pipe, told him, "That he would make a melancholy man merry, and him that was merry much merrier than before, a lover more enamoured, a religious man more devout." Ismenias the Theban, Chiron the centaur, is said to have cured this and many other diseases by music alone: as now they do those, saith Bodine, that are troubled with St. Vitus's Bedlam dance.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-8.txt|title=Gutenberg.org|access-date=2022-08-28|archive-date=2020-08-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200809183107/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-8.txt|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>[http://www.med.mun.ca/munmed/84/crellin.htm "Humanities are the Hormones: A Tarantella Comes to Newfoundland. What should we do about it?"] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150215015105/http://www.med.mun.ca/munmed/84/crellin.htm |date=February 15, 2015 }} by Dr. John Crellin, ''Munmed'', newsletter of the Faculty of Medicine, [[Memorial University of Newfoundland]], 1996.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|author1=Aung, Steven K.H. |author2=Lee, Mathew H.M. |title=Music, Sounds, Medicine, and Meditation: An Integrative Approach to the Healing Arts |journal=Alternative & Complementary Therapies |year=2004 |volume=10 |issue=5 |pages=266–270 |doi=10.1089/act.2004.10.266}}</ref>}}

In the [[Encyclopédie]] of [[Denis Diderot|Diderot]] and [[Jean le Rond d'Alembert|d'Alembert]], the causes of melancholia are stated to be similar to those that cause [[Mania]]: "grief, pains of the spirit, passions, as well as all the love and sexual appetites that go unsatisfied."<ref>{{cite journal |author=Denis Diderot |title= Melancholia |url= http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0000.808/--melancholia?rgn=main;view=fulltext |date= 2015 |journal= The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project |access-date= 1 April 2015 |archive-date= 2 April 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150402215527/http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/did2222.0000.808/--melancholia?rgn=main;view=fulltext |url-status= live }}</ref>