The anatomy of melancholy : what it is, with all the kinds causes, symptomes, prognostickes, & seuerall cures of it in three partitions, with their severall sections, members & subsections, philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened & cut up / By Democritus Junior [pseud.] With a satyricall preface, conducing to the following discourse.

  • Burton Robert, 1576-1640.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The anatomy of melancholy : what it is, with all the kinds causes, symptomes, prognostickes, & seuerall cures of it in three partitions, with their severall sections, members & subsections, philosophically, medicinally, historically, opened & cut up / By Democritus Junior [pseud.] With a satyricall preface, conducing to the following discourse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    many thousands voluntarily break their own necks, as Cleombrotus Ambor- ciatus, auditors of old, precipitate themselves, that they may participate of that unspeakable happiness in the other world. One poisons, another strangles himself, and the King of China had done as much, deluded with the vain hope, had he not been detained by his servant. But who can sufficiently tell of their several superstitions, vexations, follies, torments? I may conclude with d Possevinus, Religio facit asperos mites, homines eferis; superstitio ex hominibu/? /era, religion makes wild beasts civil, superstition makes wise men beast*, and fools ; and the discreetest that are, if they give way to it, are no better than dizzards; nay more, if that of Plotinus be true, is unus religionis scopus, ut ei quern colimus similes fiamus, that is the drift of religion to make us like him whom we worship : what shall be the end of idolaters, but to degenerate into stocks and stones ? of such as worship these heathen gods, for dii gentium dcemonia, ebut to become devils themselves? Tis there tore exitiosus error, et maxime periculosus, a most perilous and dangerous error of all others, as f Plutarch holds, turbulenta passio hominem consternans, a pestilent, a trouble- some passion, that utterly undoeth men. Unhappy superstition, gPliny calls it, rnorte non finitur, death takes away life, but not superstition. Impious and ignorant are far more happy than they which are superstitious, no torture like to it, none so continuate, so general, so destructive, so violent. In this superstitious row, Jews for antiquity may go next to Gentiles : what of old they have done, what idolatries they have committed in their groves and high places, what their Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Essei, and such sectaries have maintained, I will not so much as mention: for the present, I presume no nation under heaven can be more sottish, ignorant, blind, superstitious, wilful, obstinate, and peevish, tiring themselves with vain ceremonies to no purpose; he that shall but read their rabbins’ ridiculous comments, their strange interpretation of scriptures, their absurd ceremonies, fables, childish tales, which they stedfastly believe, will think they be scarce rational crea- tures ; their foolish h customs, when they rise in the morning, and how thev prepare themselves to prayer, to meat, with what superstitious washings, how to their sabbath, to their other feasts, weddings, burials, &c. Last of all, the expectation of their Messiah, and those figments, miracles, vain pomp that shall attend him, as how he shall terrify the Gentiles, and overcome them by new diseases ; how Michael the archangel shall sound his trumpet, how he shall gather all the scattered Jews in the Holy Land, and there make them a great banquet, “'Wherein shall be all the birds, beasts, fishes, that ever God made, a cup of wine that grew in Paradise, and that hath been kept in Adam’s cellar ever since.” At the first course shall be served in that great ox in Job iv. 10, “that every day feeds on a thousand hills,” Psal. 1. 10, that great Leviathan, and a great bird, that laid an egg so big, “kthat by chance tumbling out of the nest, it knocked down three hundred tall cedars, and breaking as it fell, drowned one hundred and sixty villages this bird stood up to the knees in the sea, and the sea was so deep, that a hatchet would not tall to the bottom in seven years : of their Messiah’s 1 wives and children ; Adam and Eve, &c., and that one stupend fiction amongst the rest: when a Homan prince asked of rabbi Jehosua ben Hanania, why the Jews’ God was compared to a lion ; he made answer he compared himself to no ordinary lion but to one in the wood Ela, which, when he desired to see, the rabbin prayed de .Sr iHolta, 5Tb' foL m- . * Quin Ipsius diaboli ut ncqultiam referant fLilx finem h r>.uxt”flu9 Svna^ ’ nUtem sPer8lltionis. P^rt >>a-c sues tenmnoa ultra vitro RUttur inferlus SeSfifw t Sel™ ZlG “ ““f iTV6' !mlic<3n- nut P<* I)CU3 unquam crcavit mnctabuntur, et vlimm generosuni,' Ac. k Cujus ^ king of thlTworld Tn'T'', *** 1G° indp £un“ ll^cy daughters stuSl atteV'i oThmcaT ° ^ b0 “* *’**“*> “ * written. 1’s xlv. 10, •• Ki**?