The Noonday Demon (91 page)

268
The quotation from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s
The Possessed
is on page 96.

269
The British court finding on the diabetic anorexic was brought up in an oral interview with Dr. Deborah Christie, who worked on the case. See Deborah Christie and Russell Viner, “Eating disorders and self-harm in adolescent diabetes,”
Journal of Adolescent Health
27 (2000).

270
The quotation from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Tithonus” is lines 66–71, in
Tennyson’s Poetry,
page 72.

270
The lines from Eliot are in the epigraph to his poem “The Waste Land.”
The Complete Poems and Plays
presents the Latin: “Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σíβμλλα τí θέλɛιS; respondebat illa: απoθανɛιν θέλω,” page 37.

271
This poem by Emily Dickinson is in
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson,
page 262.

273
The quotation from E. M. Cioran is in his
A Short History of Decay,
page 36.

273
Virginia Woolf’s suicide note is quoted from
The Letters of Virginia Woolf,
vol. 6, pages 486–87.

274
The quotations from Virginia Woolf’s diaries come from
The Diary of Virginia Woolf,
pages 110–11.

278
Ronald Dworkin’s remarks are in
Life’s Dominion,
page 93.

278
The quotation from Rilke is from “Requiem for a Friend,” in
The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke,
page 85.

280
The quotation from A. Alvarez is from
The Savage God,
page 75.

281
The quotation from Nadezhda Mandelstam is in
Ibid.,
151–52.

281
The quotation from Primo Levi is from the U.S. edition of
The Drowned and the Saved,
pages 70–71.

282
That medications may have been to blame for the suicide of Primo Levi is suggested in Peter Bailey’s introduction to the British edition of
The Drowned and the Saved.

283
Nietzsche writes in
Beyond Good and Evil,
maxim 157, page 103: “The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.”

285
Though I was not able to find any secondary source that plumbed the history of depression in a fully convincing way, I wish to acknowledge my considerable debt to Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression.

285
Etymology of the word
depression
is from
The Oxford English Dictionary,
vol. 3, page 220.

285
The Beckett quotation is from
Waiting for Godot.
I have taken it from
The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett,
page 31.

286
For a general description of humoral theory as it existed among the Greeks, including the views of Empedocles on melancholy, see Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 7–12.

286
The quotations from the Hippocratic Corpus, which, for the sake of simplicity, I have referenced as from Hippocrates, may be found in
Hippocrates,
W. H. S. Jones and E. T. Withington, trans. and eds., book 2, page 175. The information on his cure of King Perdiccas II is in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s rigorous
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
page 164.

287
The suggestion that
chole
was conflated with
cholos
comes from Bennett Simon’s
Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece,
page 235.

287
The use of black moods in Homer is from
Ibid.

287
The quotation of Homer from
The Iliad
is in book 6, lines 236–40, page 202.

287
Hippocrates’ attacks on the practitioners of sacred medicine is in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
page 162. That “all that philosophers have written on natural science no more pertains to medicine than to painting” is quoted in Iago Galdston’s
Historic Derivations of Modern Psychiatry,
page 12.

287
Socrates’ and Plato’s opposition to Hippocrates, as well as Plato’s model of the human psyche, are described in Bennett Simon’s
Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece,
pages 224–27. A good comparison between Plato’s and Freud’s ideas exists in Iago Galdston’s
Historic Derivations of Modern Psychiatry,
pages 14–16. Plato’s ideas concerning the importance of childhood and family in the development of the child are discussed in Simon’s
Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece,
pages 171–72.

288
Philotimus’ prescription of a lead helmet is described in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
page 101.

288
The examples of Chrysippus of Cnidus’ cauliflower remedy, Philistion and Plistonicus’ basil mixture, and Philagrius’ notion that excessive loss of sperm leads to depressive symptoms are from
Ibid.,
102–3.

288
Aristotle’s formulation of the mind-body relationship, his belief in the heart as the seat of the humors, and his disparagements of the brain are taken from
Ibid.,
106–12.

288
Aristotle’s famous words on the inspired character of the melancholic are in his “Problemata,” book 30, page 953a. The following quote is taken from the same piece, pages 954a–b.

289
The lines from
The Sack of Troy
are quoted from Bennett Simon’s
Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece,
page 231.

289
The lines from Seneca are in Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s
Born Under Saturn,
page 99.

289
Menander’s grim line is from
Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta,
fragment 18.

289
For more on the Skeptics, including particularly relevant information on Medius,
Aristogen, and Metrodorus, see Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
pages 133–35.

289
For more on Erasistratus of Juli see
Ibid.,
137–38.

289
The line from Herophilus of Calcedonius, as well as the policies of Menodotus of Nicomedia, is from
Ibid.,
138–40.

289
A lovely chapter on Rufus of Ephesus may be found in Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 35–39. This provides the selected quotations I have used, as well as the recipe for the “sacred remedy.”

290
The information on the use of dripping pipes and hammocks is from
Ibid.,
35. The prescription of light-colored foods and human breast milk is in Barbara Tolley’s unpublished dissertation “The Languages of Melancholy in
Le Philosophe Anglais,
” page 17.

290
The views of Aretaeus of Capidoccia are described in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
pages 223–32.

291
There is a great deal of material on Galen, both in general medical histories and in more specific accounts of early psychiatry. I have relied particularly heavily on Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression
and Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry.
The quotations here are from the latter, pages 193–209.

291
The information on Aztec treatments is in Tzvetan Todorov’s
The Conquest of America,
page 68. I thank Elena Phipps for leading me to this material.

292
The Stoic philosophers and their role in medical wisdom are in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s
A History of Ancient Psychiatry,
pages 133–43.

292
For a discussion of Saint Augustine, including the implications of his positions, see Judith Neaman’s
Suggestion of the Devil,
pages 51–65.

292
Nebuchadnezzar is described in the King James Version of the Bible in Daniel 4:33.

292
The phrase “the noonday demon” occurs in the literature on this subject and seems to have been composed from several primary biblical sources. The passage in question is given in the King James Version of the Bible (Psalms 91:6), which sticks closely in this matter to the original Hebrew, as: “the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” In the Catholic Douay version of the Old Testament (Psalms 90:6) we have the phrase “the noonday devil,” which is a variant translation of the Latin
“daemonio meridiano”
of the Vulgate (attributed to Saint Jerome and commonly used in the medieval Latin West). The Latin phrase in turn derives from the old Greek or Septuagint Bible (Psalms 90:6) which has
“daimoniou mesembrinou.”
This last may have been the basis for Cassian’s translation of the phrase as “the midday demon” (cited by Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression
as coming from Cassian’s
Institutes of the Conobia;
Jackson himself uses the phrase “noonday demon” in his discussion of Cassian). I thank Dr. Kevin White at the Catholic University of America for help with this matter.

293
Of Evagrius and the use of the term
noonday demon,
Reinhard Kuhn writes in
The Demon of Noontide
on page 43 that “Of the eight vices that Evagrius discusses in his
Of Eight Capital Sins,
acedia is given the longest and most detailed treatment. . . . Evagrius, like many of his followers, referred to acedia as the ‘daemon qui etiam meridianus vocatur,’ that is, as the ‘noontide demon’ of the Psalms. . . .” Kuhn seems to have come up with both
demon of noontide
and
noontide demon
; the phrase can, however, equally be translated as
noonday demon
. Stanley Jackson writes on page 66 of
Melancholia and Depression
that acedia, as described by Evagrius, “was characterized by exhaustion, listlessness, sadness, or dejection, restlessness, aversion to the cell and ascetic life, and yearning for family and former life.”

293
On “madness” and the Inquisition, see Iago Galdston’s
Historic Derivations of Modern Psychiatry,
pages 19–22.

293
For more on Thomas Aquinas in this regard, see
Ibid.,
31–34. There has been a great deal—some might say more than is necessary—written on Aquinas and dualism.

293
The Parson’s monologue was taken from Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales Complete,
pages 588–92.

294
On the distinction between
acedia
and
tristia,
see Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 65–77.

294
Hildegard von Bingen’s vivid remark is from
Ibid.,
326.

295
On the artist Hugo van der Goes, see Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s
Born Under Saturn,
pages 108–13.

295
For an extensive discussion of Marsilio Ficino, see Paul Kristeller’s
The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino.
Many of the quotations I have used are taken from this text, pages 208–14. Additional information and quotations are taken from Winfried Schleiner’s
Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance,
pages 24–26, as well as Klibansky et al.’s
Saturn and Melancholy,
page 159; Barbara Tolley’s unpublished dissertation “The Languages of Melancholy in
Le Philosophe Anglais,
” pages 20–23; and Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
pages 60–61.

296
On Agrippa, see Winfried Schleiner’s
Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance,
pages 26–27.

296
Vasari’s comments on depressiveness among artists are presented erratically and esoterically in both volumes of his
Lives of the Artists.
In volume 1, Vasari discusses Paolo Uccello, whom he describes as ending up “solitary, eccentric, melancholy, and poor” because of “choking his mind with difficult problems,” page 95. Correggio, he writes, “was very melancholy in the practice of his art, at which he toiled unceasingly,” page 278. For an excellent secondary source on the tradition of melancholy and artistic genius, concerning especially the most supreme, Albrecht Dürer, and the German Renaissance, see Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl’s truly inspired
Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art.