To the Editor:—
In "Elizabethans on Melancholia" (212:127,1970) Veith states, "The early descriptions of melancholy almost entirely omitted or disregarded one fact, the patient's proneness to suicide. We can not now say whether suicide played a minor role in the depression of the Elizabethan era."
Several passages from Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy suggest otherwise. The first, an apparent reference from the Epistle to Damagetus, one of the spurious works of Hippocrates, may be the first medical reference to self-assaultive symptoms:
"Some kill themselves, others despair, not obtaining their desires." (vol 1, p 37, The Thirteenth Edition, corrected. London, 1827).
Another, under "Prognosticks of Melancholy" (part 1, sec 4, mem 1):
"Seldom this malady procures death, except (which is the greatest, most grievous calamity, and the misery of all miseries) they make away themselves; which is a frequent thing, and familiar amongst them. 'Tis Hippocrates observation, Galens sentence
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