400 Years of Melancholising
Robert Burton’s encyclopedic curiosity The Anatomy of Melancholy continues to offer remarkable insights into mental health.
The Oxford scholar Robert Burton completed his first and only book on 5 December 1620. Even as he did so, he was on the defensive, anticipating criticism: ‘I like it, so doth he, thou doest not, is it therefore unfit, absurd and ridiculous?’, he snaps in his Conclusion: ‘One man cannot express what every man thinks, or please all.’
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