Depression in the Past

Learn About Depression in the Past

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Oddly enough, a lot of what we can learn about depression in the past comes from literature.

For some reason, a tendency towards melancholy often seemed to be associated with the ability to write well – it was part of the poetic temperament.

Poet after poet wrote rather introspective works about what it felt like to be in the black depths of melancholy or depression.

Perhaps we could take a leaf out of their books and turn to journaling as a form of self-expression and therapy.

The list of poets who seemed to suffer from depression in some form or other (at least if their poetic works are anything to go by) reads like a list of the great authors of the English language:

John Donne, John Milton, John Keats, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, Gerald Manley Hopkins and possibly even Samuel Coleridge as well.

However, you don’t have to be as good a poet as they were to benefit from getting your feeling and thoughts out on paper.

The first major scientific work on melancholy or depression was written in 1621 by the philosopher Richard Burton.

his work’s full title was the rather unwieldy “The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, with all the Kinds, Causes, Symptoms, Prognostics & the Several Cures of it,

in Three Partitions, with their Several Sections, Numbers and Subsections, Philosophically, Medicinally and Historically Opened and Cut up�. We’ll call it the Anatomy of Melancholy for short!

If you can handle the old-fashioned English and a few bits and pieces of Latin (some of which are translated), then you can read it for yourself at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-h/10800-h.htm.

This work investigates what we would call depression, drawing on all branches of science that were known at that time. It’s quite a big work – you have been warned!

Some of the cures listed by Burton are quite interesting.

In agreement with many modern thinkers, he claims that diet can be used to treat melancholy and (in his terms) balance out the bodily humours.

Some of the things that he suggests as suitable items of diet include chicken, mutton, wheat bread, plain water, apples and oranges,

which is all very well, but he has a huge long list of forbidden foods that include a lot that doctors today would consider to be very healthy (cucumbers and cabbage, for example).

He also suggested eating food in moderation and in season, which today’s naturopaths would agree with heartily.

Other cures include moderate exercise, baths, fresh air and an active love life.

And the best sort of exercise, according to Burton, is exercise that works the mind as well as the body and is fun to do.

Music is also recommended to ease a troubled mind, whether you play it or listen to it. All good advice!

He also states that “Whosoever‌ shall hope to cure this malady in himself or any other, must first rectify these passions and perturbations of the mind: the chiefest cure consists in them.

A quiet mind‌ is the only pleasure of the world,� indicating that a troubled mind is one of the biggest caused of depression (yes, they knew that back in the 1600s!),

and suggests that people seek help by getting rid of obsessive and negative thoughts – which is precisely the sort of thing that hypnosis and hypnotherapy try to do.

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