Chapter 3 - Epidemiological Language in Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy

Summary

Melancholy is an ‘epidemicall’ disease, Burton says, noting the multitude of causes which, along with human wickedness and inherent humoral imbalances, explain the extensive and increasing suffering he observes around him. His observations tell us little about seventeenth-century epidemiology, I argue. Moreover, the meanings accorded to seemingly familiar terms such as ‘disease’, ‘symptom’, and ‘epidemic’ rest on assumptions that leave them orthogonal to today’s standard etiological medical assumptions. Yet they find resonance within recent broad theorizing about the concept of disease, in public health emphases and alternative medicine, as well as in the larger health culture of our times.