There are many reasons to read Robert Burton’s book The Anatomy of Melancholy . One reason is to experience the 17th century diagnostic mind, which gives medical information that we in the post-enlightenment, scientific twenty-first century find arcane and humorous. Take this for example: Burton discusses lycanthropy, the disease of the brain by which men are convinced they are wolves. “This malady, says Avicenna, troubleth most men in February.” A second reason to read the Anatomy is to laugh at Burton’s fanatic citations. In some of parts of the book, I can barely finish a sentence as it is so tangled with references to classical thinkers, philosophers, artists, historians with snippets of Greek and Latin which are sometimes translated and sometimes left to my own powers of deduction. Here’s an example: “ In eo pleraque perniciosa , saith the same Fabius, many childish tracts and sentences he hath, sermo illaboratus , too negligent often and remiss, as A. Gellius observes, oratio vu...
Reading, writing, traveling