BURTON, Robert. The Anatomy of Melancholy. What it is, with all the kinds, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, & severall cures of it. Oxford: John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps. 1624.
Folio. Twentieth century full brown mottled morocco, triple fillets in blind to sides, spine with raised bands and gilt central tools; pp. [4], 64; [4], 188, [4], 189-332, [2], 333-379, 370-557, [7], woodcut device to title page, woodcut initials and headpieces; L-shaped tear to bottom margin of E3 without loss but affecting text, occasional light underlining and marginal symbols in red and black ink, occasional spots but generally very bright and clean, very good.
Second edition. First published in 1621, The Anatomy of Melancholy is a landmark medical textbook on the subject of melancholia, known today as clinical depression. Burton, an Oxford scholar rather than a physician who himself suffered from the disease, addresses melancholy as the lens through which all human emotion and thought can be scrutinized, and draws upon nearly every science of his day (including psychology, physiology, astronomy, meteorology and even demonology) in his attempts to explicate the disease, making the text encyclopaedic in its range and reference, and progressive for its time. The author offers many causes for melancholy, discusses the cure of its many forms and throws much light on the customs and social attitudes of the day. Dr. Johnson said it was one of his favourite books, and the only one that "ever took him out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise." (Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.) Opening any page at random, the reader will find a mixture of wisdom, self-reflection, erudition and wonderful rhetoric. Here is Burton on recovering from the strain of ambition: "I was once so mad my selfe to bussell abroad, and seek about for preferment, tyre my selfe and trouble all my friends... And now as a myred horse that struggles at first with all his might and maine to get out, but when he sees no remedy, that all his beating will not serve, lies still, I have laboured in vaine, rest satisfied, and if I may usurpe that of Prudentius, Inveniportum, spes & fortuna valete,/ Nil mihi vobiscum, ludite nunc alios: Mine haven's found, fortune and hope adue,/ Mock others now for I have done with you" (p. 285).
This is one of the most popular psychiatric books ever written, appearing in over 70 editions since its original publication. It was also "one of the most popular books of the seventeenth century. All the learning of the age as well as its humour - and its pedantry - are there... it exercised a considerable influence on the thought of the time." (PMM).
ESTC S122247.
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