Early Modern Theories

Abstract

The discussion on mental illness in Renaissance medical treatises followed ancient and medieval guidelines. Galen’s works were edited and studied together with the major Arab and Latin commentaries. Much attention was paid to the typical symptoms of melancholy: the impairment of the rational faculty and the experience of groundless fear and sorrow. The cause of melancholy was the excess of black bile which affected the brain and the spirits. There was an increasing interest in the various forms of melancholy, and non-medical writers also treated melancholy as a source of mental suffering. In some treatises melancholy was regarded as an epidemic nuisance. The melancholic-type person was dealt with in physiognomic typologies of temperaments which were associated with four bodily humours (phlegm, bile, blood and black bile). Many authors drew on the remark in Pseudo-Aristotle’s Problems 30 according to which a moderate amount of black bile might make people exceptionally talented. This speculation was supported by Marsilio Ficino’s treatise on the melancholic condition, which he said was marked by symptoms from depression and hallucinations to exceptional creativity. While most medical authors avoided religious speculations, the rise of occultism and witchcraft persecution in later sixteenth century supported demonological explanations of melancholy. Academic authors often applied the medieval medical idea according to which it was probable that, medically speaking, the experiences of ‘demonic possessions’ were caused by melancholy, but they usually did not exclude the possibility that the devil might cause madness by disordering the humours and vital spirits. In the seventeenth century, scepticism about this emerged among learned people (1). For madness in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, see Midelfort 1999, Gowland 2006a.