The Noonday Demon (92 page)

296
The “intercourse or meddling of euill angels” comes from Andreas Du Laurens’s
Discourse,
as quoted in Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
page 49.

297
The man who felt the “evil Spirit enter by his fundament” is described in Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
page 53.

297
George Gifford’s views are in Winfried Schleiner’s
Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance,
page 182.

297
Discussions of Jan Wier, who also appears under the name Johann Weyer, are from
Ibid.,
181–87, as well as in Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
pages 54–56.

297
Freud’s remarks on Jan Wier are in his
Standard Edition,
vol. 9, page 245.

297
Reginald Scot’s views on witchcraft and the story of King James demanding Scot’s book be burned are described in detail in Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
pages 55–56, and Winfried Schleiner’s
Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance,
pages 183–87.

297
The French case of the rumbling under the short ribs is described in Winfried Schleiner’s
Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance,
page 189.

298
The words from the synod of 1583 are from
Ibid.,
190.

298
Montaigne on melancholy is a wonderful topic and warrants a long discussion of its own. For the material referenced here see
Ibid.,
179, 184. A more in-depth discussion can be found in M. A. Screech’s
Montaigne & Melancholy.

298
Andreas Du Laurens is also known as Laurentius. For the sake of simplicity, I have stuck with his non-Latin name. The discussion, including quotations, is taken from Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 86–91, and T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,”
Clio Medica
11, no. 4 (1976): 217–21.

299
The doctor of the early seventeenth century to whom I refer here is Richard Napier, and his remarks may be found in Michael MacDonald’s
Mystical Bedlam,
pages 159–60. John Archer wrote in his 1673 manuscript that melancholy is the “greatest enemy of nature,” as referenced in
Mystical Bedlam,
page 160.

299
References to Levinus Lemnius, Huarte, Luis Mercado, and Joannes Baptista Silvaticus may be found in Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
page 62.

300
The melancholic barber is in the play
Midas
by Lyly. His line is quoted as it appears in Michael MacDonald’s
Mystical Bedlam,
page 151.

300
The physician whose melancholy patients tended to be titled is Richard Napier. The statistics are from
Ibid.,
151. Napier’s account of his practice is unusually thorough and is among the best materials of its period. He seems to have had an acute sensitivity to mental health complaints and is eloquent about them.

301
That those who were truly ill with melancholia had sympathy and respect is borne out in the writings of Timothy Rogers. In his
Discourse
of 1691 he writes extensively about the consideration and understanding that should be extended to the depressed. “Do not urge your Friends under the Disease of Melancholly, to things which they cannot do,” he writes. “They are as persons whose bones are broken, and that are in great pain and anguish, and consequently under an incapacity for action . . . if it were possible by any means innocently to divert them, you would do them a great kindness.” See
A Discourse Concerning Trouble of the Mind and the Disease of Melancholly,
sections of which are reprinted in Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine’s
300 Years of Psychiatry,
pages 248–51.

301
The quotes from “Il Penseroso” are lines 11–14, 168–69, and 173–76, from John Milton’s
Complete Poems and Major Prose,
pages 72 and 76.

301
Robert Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy
makes excellent reading and contains a great deal of wisdom that I have not been able to reproduce here. Commentaries on Burton abound. For a short and concise summary of his life and work, see Stanley Jackson’s
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 95–99. For lengthier discussions, see Lawrence Babb’s
The Elizabethan Malady,
Eleanor Vicari’s
The View from Minerva’s Tower,
Vieda Skultan’s
English Madness,
and Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s
Born Under Saturn.
I have also relied heavily upon Paolo Bernardini’s unpublished manuscript “
Melancholia gravis:
Robert Burton’s
Anatomy
(1621) and the Links between Suicide and Melancholy.” The quotations reproduced in the text come from Robert Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy,
pages 129–39, 162–71, 384–85, and 391. The quotes used in the discussion of Burton and suicide are taken directly from Bernardini’s manuscript.

304
The tales of Caspar Barlaeus and the man who had to be packed in straw, Ludovicus a Casanova on the butter man, the story of Charles VI, and the recent exemplar of the glass delusion in Holland are all in F. F. Blok’s
Caspar Barlaeus,
pages 105–21.

306
On Descartes and mental health, see Theodore Brown’s essay “Descartes, dualism, and psychosomatic medicine,” in W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd,
The Anatomy of Madness,
vol. 1, pages 40–62. Selections of Descartes’s
The Passions of the Soul
appear in Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine’s
300 Years of Psychiatry,
pages 133–34.

306
The passages from Willis may be found in his
Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes,
pages 179, 188–201, and 209. T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,”
Clio Medica
11, no. 4 (1976), and Allan Ingram’s
The Madhouse of Language
were both useful secondary sources.

307
The passages from Nicholas Robinson may be found in Allan Ingram’s
The Madhouse of Language,
pages 24–25.

307
Boerhaave specifically rejected humoral theory and cultivated a notion of the body as a fibrous mass fed by the hydraulic action of the blood. The primary causes of melancholy were, Boerhaave believed, “all things, which fix, exhaust, or confound the nervous juices from the Brain; as great and unexpected frightful accidents, a great Application upon any Object whatever; strong Love, Waking Solitude, Fear, and hysterical Affections.” Other causes to be considered were “immoderate Venery; Drink; Parts of Animal dried in Smoke, Air or Salt; unripe Fruits; mealy unfermented Matters.” Those who allowed intemperate activity or consumption to imbalance their blood were likely to produce acidic materials, which Boerhaave called “acrids,” and then their bile would undergo “acrimonious degeneration” to create a nasty burning liquid that went around causing trouble throughout the body. In the brain, a “coagulating acid” would solidify the blood, which would cease to circulate to certain essential areas.

307
Secondary sources on Boerhaave’s theories abound. Among the best are Stanley Jackson’s summary in
Melancholia and Depression,
pages 119–21, and T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,”
Clio Medica
11, no. 4 (1976): 224–27. The quotations are taken from Boerhaave’s
Aphorisms,
as well as selected quotes from T. H. Jobe’s article, pages 226–27.

307
Boerhaave had many followers and disciples. It is interesting to look at how he influenced, for example, Richard Mead. In his magnum opus, published in 1751, Mead stuck with the idea of mechanics but moved them from the blood system to the “animal spirits” that move along the nerves. “Nothing disorders the mind so much as love and religion,” he observed. For Mead as for Boerhaave, the brain is “manifestly a large gland” and the nerves are “an excretory duct,” and whatever goes along the nerves is a “thin volatile liquor of great force and elasticity.” Again, there are shadows of accuracy here: something does come from the brain and in a sense travels along the nerves, and that is the neurotransmitters. The first two quotations from Richard Mead may be found in his
Medical Precepts and Cautions,
pages 76 and 78; the last three quotations may be found in his collected works, entitled
The Medical Works of Richard Mead, M.D.,
page xxi.

307
Julien Offray de La Mettrie is described in some detail in Aram Vartanian’s
La Mettrie’s L’Homme Machine.
The quote is taken from Vartanian’s book, page 22.

308
Friedrich Hoffman said in 1783 that blood became thick through “debility of the brain, from long grief or fear or love.” He proposed, further, that mania and depression, long treated as two unrelated problems, “appear to be rather different stages of one; the mania being properly an exacerbation of melancholy, and leaving the patient melancholic in the calmer intervals.” He picks up on Boerhaave’s ideas in saying that melancholy was “a retardation of the circulation” and mania, “an acceleration of it.” The passages from Friedrich Hoffman may be found in his
A System of the Practice of Medicine,
pages 298–303.

308
The quotations from Spinoza are from
The Ethics of Spinoza,
pages 139–40.

309
For a good discussion of Bedlam, see Marlene Arieno’s
Victorian Lunatics,
especially
pages 16–19. On Bicêtre and its most famous Dr. Philippe Pinel, see Dora Weiner’s “ ‘Le geste de Pinel’: The History of a Psychiatric Myth,” published as chapter 12 of
Discovering the History of Psychiatry,
edited by Mark Micale and Roy Porter.

309
Blake’s complaint is from Roy Porter’s
Mind-Forg’d Manacles,
page 73.

309
There are a multitude of general books on madness and the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. My discussion has been influenced by a variety of these including Andrew Scull’s
Social Order/Mental Disorder,
Michel Foucault’s
Madness and Civilization,
and Roy Porter’s
Mind-Forg’d Manacles.

309
The quotation from John Monro may be found in Andrew Scull’s
Social Order/Mental Disorder,
page 59.

309
Depictions of some of the most alarming-looking torture devices of the early eighteenth century are to be found in
Ibid.,
69–72.

309
Boswell’s comments on mental illness, as well as his diaries and correspondence, may be found in Allan Ingram’s
The Madhouse of Language,
pages 146–49.

310
Samuel Johnson on Burton is in Roy Porter’s
Mind-Forg’d Manacles,
pages 75–77. Johnson on “the black dog” is in Max Byrd’s
Visits to Bedlam,
page 127.

310
For Cowper on his depression, including the passages quoted, see Allan Ingram’s
The Madhouse of Language,
pages 149–50. The lines of poetry are from his “Lines Written During a Period of Insanity,” in
The Poetical Works of William Cowper,
page 290.

311
Edward Young’s lines are in his
The Complaint, or Night-Thoughts,
vol. 1, page 11.

311
Tobias Smollett’s description of himself as a hospital is in Roy Porter’s
Mind-Forg’d Manacles,
endnotes, page 345.

311
The quotation from the Marquise du Deffand comes from Jerome Zerbe and Cyril Connolly,
Les Pavillons of the Eighteenth Century,
page 21.

311
Johnson on Scotland is in Max Byrd’s
Visits to Bedlam,
page 126.

311
John Brown’s fit disparagement of the British climate, as well as Edmund Burke’s remarks, are in
Ibid.,
126. One could go on for volumes with eighteenth-century comments on melancholy. Jonathan Swift, a splenetic fellow himself, had little mercy for these many accounts. He was very much of the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality: “A fancy would sometimes take a Yahoo, to retire into a Corner, to lie down and howl, and groan, and spurn away all that came near him, although he were young and fat, and wanted neither Food nor Water; nor did the Servants imagine what could possibly ail him. And the only Remedy they found was to set him to hard Work, after which he would infallibly come to himself.” This passage is from
Gulliver’s Travels,
page 199.