Anatomy of Melancholy

Apple, M.I. "Arabism, Hermeticism and the form of the Anatomy of Melancholy" PhD thesis, Univ. of Michigan, 1970. 

Burton, Robert.The anatomy of melancholy. Edited by Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling and Rhonda L. Blair. Edited by Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling and Rhonda L. Blair. Oxford Clarendon P., 1994. 

Occasional historical references to what we now call menopause and therapy for the condition can be found, such as the reference to hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms in the 1628 book. The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. A 1675 account described a cooling diet for menopause. In 1701, physician Thomas Sydenham described the tendency of women ages 45-50 to develop hysterick fits, and suggested blood letting as therapy. 

This style of presentation, with multiple emblematic personages or scenes, is quite common in this period among the best known examples is the frontispiece of Robert Burton s Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1628). A simplified version of the pattern (Plate 31) appears in the treatise of Rhumelius, Medicina Spagyrica (Frankfurt, 1648), with Hermes Trismegistus standing opposite Arnold of Villanova. Beneath Hermes is a sick room beneath Arnold, an apothecary s shop. At bottom center is a kind of athanor at top center, a dove descends from heaven to earth, where two serpents arise. 

Johannes Kepler, Harmonices mundi libri V (Linz, 1619). Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy Oxioid, 1621). Livius Galante, Christianae Theologiae cum platonica... 

If its physicality made theater a particular target for attacks on literature, then, it also singled it out as a uniquely powerful form of remedy. Robert Burton, in Anatomy of Melancholy, urged sufferers to Use. . . scenical shews, plays, [and] games to drive away ill humors.63 The playwright Thomas Heywood similarly argued for the capacity of plays... 

Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. 2, ed. A. R. Shilleto (London George Bell, 1893), 142. 

Robert Burton,Anatomy of Melancholy, ecstatic Rumphlus, Indonesia, Inebriation... 

Burton, R. (1907) The Anatomy of Melancholy. Chatto and Windus, London. 

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