Melancholy
Melancholia or melancholy (from Greek: µέλαινα χολή melaina chole, meaning black bile) is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.
Melancholy was viewed as one of the four temperaments corresponding to the four humours. Up until the 18th century, medical practitioners and scholars classified melancholic conditions based on a common perception: an excess of a theoretical fluid known as "black bile, " often associated with the spleen. Hippocrates and other ancient physicians characterized melancholia as a distinct illness, manifesting both mental and physical symptoms such as persistent fears, despondency, poor appetite, abulia, insomnia, irritability, and agitation. Subsequently, fixed delusions were incorporated into the list of symptoms by Galen and others. During the Middle Ages, the understanding of melancholia transitioned to a religious viewpoint, viewing sadness as a vice or suggesting demonic possession as a potential cause, rather than purely somatic origins of the condition.
During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a cultural and literary cult of melancholia emerged in England, linked to the Neoplatonist and humanist Marsilio Ficino's reevaluation of melancholia, which transformed it from a sign of vice into a mark of genius. This fashionable melancholy became a prominent theme in literature, art, and music of the era.
Between the late 18th and late 19th centuries, melancholia was a common medical diagnosis. In this period, the focus was on the abnormal beliefs associated with the disorder rather than on depression and affective symptoms. In the 19th century, melancholia was considered to be rooted in subjective 'passions' that seemingly caused disordered mood, in contrast to modern biomedical explanations for mood disorders. In Victorian Britain, the notion of melancholia as a disease evolved as it became increasingly classifiable and diagnosable with a set list of symptoms that contributed to a biomedical model for understanding mental disease. However, in the 20th century, the focus again shifted, and the term became essentially synonymous with depression. Indeed, modern concepts of depression as a mood disorder eventually arose from this historical context. Today, the terms "melancholia" and "melancholic" are still used in medical diagnostic classification, such as in ICD-11 and DSM-5, to specify certain features that may be present in major depression.
Related terms used in historical medicine include lugubriousness (from Latin lugere: "to mourn"), moroseness (from Latin morosus: "self-will or fastidious habit"), wistfulness (from a blend of "wishful" and the obsolete English wistly, meaning "intently"), and saturnineness (from Latin Saturninus: "of the planet Saturn ").
See also [ Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions ]
External links
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Melancholy ]
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