Book Bearings
The Anatomy of Melancholy
- 670 pages · about 11 hours
- First published 1621
- 60 editions
- Free to read
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1 About this book
The Anatomy of Melancholy (full title: The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up) is a book by Robert Burton, first published in 1621 but republished five more times over the next seventeen years with massive alterations and expansions.
The book is a medical treatise about melancholy (depression). Over 500,000 words long, it discusses a wide range of topics besides depression – including history, astronomy, geography, and various aspects of literature and science – and frequently uses humour to make points or explain topics. Burton wrote it under the pseudonym Democritus Junior as a reference to the Ancient Greek "laughing philosopher" Democritus.
Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Good for readers who want: mental health, psychology, and a long read.
- Mental health
- Psychology
- Medicine
- Manic-depressive illness
- Melancholy
- Mental Depression
- Psychiatry
- Depression
2 Read it free, right here
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Read it on the Internet Archive3 About Robert Burton
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
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