The Anatomy of Melancholy

The book is a medical textbook in which the author Burton applies his vast and varied learning, in the scholastic manner, to the subject of melancholia with all the kinds, causes, symptoms, prognostics, and several cures of it. In fact, the Anatomy uses melancholy as the lens through which all human emotion and thought may be scrutinized, and virtually the entire contents of a 17th-century library are marshalled into service of this goal. It is encyclopedic in its range and reference.