Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Citation
- Introduction: Zisca's Drum: Reading and Cure
- Chapter 1 Imagining Readings
- Chapter 2 The Cure of Despair: Reading the End of The Anatomy of Melancholy
- Chapter 3 Printed Therapeutics: The Anatomy of Melancholy and Early Modern Medical Writing
- Chapter 4 The Whole Physician
- Chapter 5 Speaking out of Experience
- Chapter 6 The Structure of Melancholy: From Cause to Cure
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 4 - The Whole Physician
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Citation
- Introduction: Zisca's Drum: Reading and Cure
- Chapter 1 Imagining Readings
- Chapter 2 The Cure of Despair: Reading the End of The Anatomy of Melancholy
- Chapter 3 Printed Therapeutics: The Anatomy of Melancholy and Early Modern Medical Writing
- Chapter 4 The Whole Physician
- Chapter 5 Speaking out of Experience
- Chapter 6 The Structure of Melancholy: From Cause to Cure
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
At the end of the first edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy, Burton provides his reader with a separate conclusion, the purpose of which is to ‘cut the strings of Democritus visor, to unmaske and shew him as he is’. He apologises for the work's inadequacies, adds a general word of thanks to his friends, and signs himself ‘From my Studie in Christ-Church Oxon. Decemb 5. 1620. Robert Burton’. In subsequent editions this conclusion is removed, with much of the material naturally fitted into the satirical preface, ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, instead. However, one important passage in this conclusion does not find a place in the text from 1624 onwards, and is hence easily overlooked. In it Burton reveals something of the genesis of the printed book, as he thanks those friends
to whom I have beene beholden for their approbation, or troubled in perusing severall parts, or all of this Treatise. For I did impart it to some of our worthiest Physitians, whose approbations I had for matters of Physicke, and to some Divines, and others of better note in our University.
The story of how the Anatomy circulated in Oxford before publication, who read it, and how they reacted (apart from plain ‘approbation’) is an intriguing and, sadly, untraceable one. What is more telling is his statement that he consulted physicians and divines.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern EnglandReading 'The Anatomy of Melancholy', pp. 112 - 137Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010