The Noonday Demon

by Solomon, Andrew

  288 Philotimus’ prescription of a lead helmet is described in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s A History of Ancient Psychiatry, page 101.

  288 The examples of Chrysippus of Cnidus’ cauliflower remedy, Philistion and Plistonicus’ basil mixture, and Philagrius’ notion that excessive loss of sperm leads to depressive symptoms are from Ibid., 102–3.

  288 Aristotle’s formulation of the mind-body relationship, his belief in the heart as the seat of the humors, and his disparagements of the brain are taken from Ibid., 106–12.

  288 Aristotle’s famous words on the inspired character of the melancholic are in his “Problemata,” book 30, page 953a. The following quote is taken from the same piece, pages 954a–b.

  289 The lines from The Sack of Troy are quoted from Bennett Simon’s Mind and Madness in Ancient Greece, page 231.

  289 The lines from Seneca are in Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s Born Under Saturn, page 99.

  289 Menander’s grim line is from Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, fragment 18.

  289 For more on the Skeptics, including particularly relevant information on Medius, Aristogen, and Metrodorus, see Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s A History of Ancient Psychiatry, pages 133–35.

  289 For more on Erasistratus of Juli see Ibid., 137–38.

  289 The line from Herophilus of Calcedonius, as well as the policies of Menodotus of Nicomedia, is from Ibid., 138–40.

  289 A lovely chapter on Rufus of Ephesus may be found in Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, pages 35–39. This provides the selected quotations I have used, as well as the recipe for the “sacred remedy.”

  290 The information on the use of dripping pipes and hammocks is from Ibid., 35. The prescription of light-colored foods and human breast milk is in Barbara Tolley’s unpublished dissertation “The Languages of Melancholy in Le Philosophe Anglais,” page 17.

  290 The views of Aretaeus of Capidoccia are described in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s A History of Ancient Psychiatry, pages 223–32.

  291 There is a great deal of material on Galen, both in general medical histories and in more specific accounts of early psychiatry. I have relied particularly heavily on Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression and Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s A History of Ancient Psychiatry. The quotations here are from the latter, pages 193–209.

  291 The information on Aztec treatments is in Tzvetan Todorov’s The Conquest of America, page 68. I thank Elena Phipps for leading me to this material.

  292 The Stoic philosophers and their role in medical wisdom are in Giuseppe Roccatagliata’s A History of Ancient Psychiatry, pages 133–43.

  292 For a discussion of Saint Augustine, including the implications of his positions, see Judith Neaman’s Suggestion of the Devil, pages 51–65.

  292 Nebuchadnezzar is described in the King James Version of the Bible in Daniel 4:33.

  292 The phrase “the noonday demon” occurs in the literature on this subject and seems to have been composed from several primary biblical sources. The passage in question is given in the King James Version of the Bible (Psalms 91:6), which sticks closely in this matter to the original Hebrew, as: “the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” In the Catholic Douay version of the Old Testament (Psalms 90:6) we have the phrase “the noonday devil,” which is a variant translation of the Latin “daemonio meridiano” of the Vulgate (attributed to Saint Jerome and commonly used in the medieval Latin West). The Latin phrase in turn derives from the old Greek or Septuagint Bible (Psalms 90:6) which has “daimoniou mesembrinou.” This last may have been the basis for Cassian’s translation of the phrase as “the midday demon” (cited by Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression as coming from Cassian’s Institutes of the Conobia; Jackson himself uses the phrase “noonday demon” in his discussion of Cassian). I thank Dr. Kevin White at the Catholic University of America for help with this matter.

  293 Of Evagrius and the use of the term noonday demon, Reinhard Kuhn writes in The Demon of Noontide on page 43 that “Of the eight vices that Evagrius discusses in his Of Eight Capital Sins, acedia is given the longest and most detailed treatment. . . . Evagrius, like many of his followers, referred to acedia as the ‘daemon qui etiam meridianus vocatur,’ that is, as the ‘noontide demon’ of the Psalms. . . .” Kuhn seems to have come up with both demon of noontide and noontide demon; the phrase can, however, equally be translated as noonday demon. Stanley Jackson writes on page 66 of Melancholia and Depression that acedia, as described by Evagrius, “was characterized by exhaustion, listlessness, sadness, or dejection, restlessness, aversion to the cell and ascetic life, and yearning for family and former life.”

  293 On “madness” and the Inquisition, see Iago Galdston’s Historic Derivations of Modern Psychiatry, pages 19–22.

  293 For more on Thomas Aquinas in this regard, see Ibid., 31–34. There has been a great deal—some might say more than is necessary—written on Aquinas and dualism.

  293 The Parson’s monologue was taken from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Complete, pages 588–92.

  294 On the distinction between acedia and tristia, see Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, pages 65–77.

  294 Hildegard von Bingen’s vivid remark is from Ibid., 326.

  295 On the artist Hugo van der Goes, see Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s Born Under Saturn, pages 108–13.

  295 For an extensive discussion of Marsilio Ficino, see Paul Kristeller’s The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. Many of the quotations I have used are taken from this text, pages 208–14. Additional information and quotations are taken from Winfried Schleiner’s Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance, pages 24–26, as well as Klibansky et al.’s Saturn and Melancholy, page 159; Barbara Tolley’s unpublished dissertation “The Languages of Melancholy in Le Philosophe Anglais,” pages 20–23; and Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, pages 60–61.

  296 On Agrippa, see Winfried Schleiner’s Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance, pages 26–27.

  296 Vasari’s comments on depressiveness among artists are presented erratically and esoterically in both volumes of his Lives of the Artists. In volume 1, Vasari discusses Paolo Uccello, whom he describes as ending up “solitary, eccentric, melancholy, and poor” because of “choking his mind with difficult problems,” page 95. Correggio, he writes, “was very melancholy in the practice of his art, at which he toiled unceasingly,” page 278. For an excellent secondary source on the tradition of melancholy and artistic genius, concerning especially the most supreme, Albrecht Dürer, and the German Renaissance, see Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl’s truly inspired Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art.

  296 The “intercourse or meddling of euill angels” comes from Andreas Du Laurens’s Discourse, as quoted in Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, page 49.

  297 The man who felt the “evil Spirit enter by his fundament” is described in Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, page 53.

  297 George Gifford’s views are in Winfried Schleiner’s Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance, page 182.

  297 Discussions of Jan Wier, who also appears under the name Johann Weyer, are from Ibid., 181–87, as well as in Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, pages 54–56.

  297 Freud’s remarks on Jan Wier are in his Standard Edition, vol. 9, page 245.

  297 Reginald Scot’s views on witchcraft and the story of King James demanding Scot’s book be burned are described in detail in Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, pages 55–56, and Winfried Schleiner’s Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance, pages 183–87.

  297 The French case of the rumbling under the short ribs is described in Winfried Schleiner’s Melancholy, Genius, and Utopia in the Renaissance, page 189.

  298 The words from the synod of 1583 are from Ibid., 190.

  298 Montaigne on melancholy is a wonderful topic and warrants a long discussion of its own. For the material referenced here se
e Ibid., 179, 184. A more in-depth discussion can be found in M. A. Screech’s Montaigne & Melancholy.

  298 Andreas Du Laurens is also known as Laurentius. For the sake of simplicity, I have stuck with his non-Latin name. The discussion, including quotations, is taken from Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, pages 86–91, and T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Clio Medica 11, no. 4 (1976): 217–21.

  299 The doctor of the early seventeenth century to whom I refer here is Richard Napier, and his remarks may be found in Michael MacDonald’s Mystical Bedlam, pages 159–60. John Archer wrote in his 1673 manuscript that melancholy is the “greatest enemy of nature,” as referenced in Mystical Bedlam, page 160.

  299 References to Levinus Lemnius, Huarte, Luis Mercado, and Joannes Baptista Silvaticus may be found in Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, page 62.

  300 The melancholic barber is in the play Midas by Lyly. His line is quoted as it appears in Michael MacDonald’s Mystical Bedlam, page 151.

  300 The physician whose melancholy patients tended to be titled is Richard Napier. The statistics are from Ibid., 151. Napier’s account of his practice is unusually thorough and is among the best materials of its period. He seems to have had an acute sensitivity to mental health complaints and is eloquent about them.

  301 That those who were truly ill with melancholia had sympathy and respect is borne out in the writings of Timothy Rogers. In his Discourse of 1691 he writes extensively about the consideration and understanding that should be extended to the depressed. “Do not urge your Friends under the Disease of Melancholly, to things which they cannot do,” he writes. “They are as persons whose bones are broken, and that are in great pain and anguish, and consequently under an incapacity for action . . . if it were possible by any means innocently to divert them, you would do them a great kindness.” See A Discourse Concerning Trouble of the Mind and the Disease of Melancholly, sections of which are reprinted in Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine’s 300 Years of Psychiatry, pages 248–51.

  301 The quotes from “Il Penseroso” are lines 11–14, 168–69, and 173–76, from John Milton’s Complete Poems and Major Prose, pages 72 and 76.

  301 Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy makes excellent reading and contains a great deal of wisdom that I have not been able to reproduce here. Commentaries on Burton abound. For a short and concise summary of his life and work, see Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression, pages 95–99. For lengthier discussions, see Lawrence Babb’s The Elizabethan Malady, Eleanor Vicari’s The View from Minerva’s Tower, Vieda Skultan’s English Madness, and Rudolph and Margot Wittkower’s Born Under Saturn. I have also relied heavily upon Paolo Bernardini’s unpublished manuscript “Melancholia gravis: Robert Burton’s Anatomy (1621) and the Links between Suicide and Melancholy.” The quotations reproduced in the text come from Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, pages 129–39, 162–71, 384–85, and 391. The quotes used in the discussion of Burton and suicide are taken directly from Bernardini’s manuscript.

  304 The tales of Caspar Barlaeus and the man who had to be packed in straw, Ludovicus a Casanova on the butter man, the story of Charles VI, and the recent exemplar of the glass delusion in Holland are all in F. F. Blok’s Caspar Barlaeus, pages 105–21.

  306 On Descartes and mental health, see Theodore Brown’s essay “Descartes, dualism, and psychosomatic medicine,” in W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd, The Anatomy of Madness, vol. 1, pages 40–62. Selections of Descartes’s The Passions of the Soul appear in Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine’s 300 Years of Psychiatry, pages 133–34.

  306 The passages from Willis may be found in his Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes, pages 179, 188–201, and 209. T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Clio Medica 11, no. 4 (1976), and Allan Ingram’s The Madhouse of Language were both useful secondary sources.

  307 The passages from Nicholas Robinson may be found in Allan Ingram’s The Madhouse of Language, pages 24–25.

  307 Boerhaave specifically rejected humoral theory and cultivated a notion of the body as a fibrous mass fed by the hydraulic action of the blood. The primary causes of melancholy were, Boerhaave believed, “all things, which fix, exhaust, or confound the nervous juices from the Brain; as great and unexpected frightful accidents, a great Application upon any Object whatever; strong Love, Waking Solitude, Fear, and hysterical Affections.” Other causes to be considered were “immoderate Venery; Drink; Parts of Animal dried in Smoke, Air or Salt; unripe Fruits; mealy unfermented Matters.” Those who allowed intemperate activity or consumption to imbalance their blood were likely to produce acidic materials, which Boerhaave called “acrids,” and then their bile would undergo “acrimonious degeneration” to create a nasty burning liquid that went around causing trouble throughout the body. In the brain, a “coagulating acid” would solidify the blood, which would cease to circulate to certain essential areas.

  307 Secondary sources on Boerhaave’s theories abound. Among the best are Stanley Jackson’s summary in Melancholia and Depression, pages 119–21, and T. H. Jobe’s “Medical Theories of Melancholia in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Clio Medica 11, no. 4 (1976): 224–27. The quotations are taken from Boerhaave’s Aphorisms, as well as selected quotes from T. H. Jobe’s article, pages 226–27.

  307 Boerhaave had many followers and disciples. It is interesting to look at how he influenced, for example, Richard Mead. In his magnum opus, published in 1751, Mead stuck with the idea of mechanics but moved them from the blood system to the “animal spirits” that move along the nerves. “Nothing disorders the mind so much as love and religion,” he observed. For Mead as for Boerhaave, the brain is “manifestly a large gland” and the nerves are “an excretory duct,” and whatever goes along the nerves is a “thin volatile liquor of great force and elasticity.” Again, there are shadows of accuracy here: something does come from the brain and in a sense travels along the nerves, and that is the neurotransmitters. The first two quotations from Richard Mead may be found in his Medical Precepts and Cautions, pages 76 and 78; the last three quotations may be found in his collected works, entitled The Medical Works of Richard Mead, M.D., page xxi.

  307 Julien Offray de La Mettrie is described in some detail in Aram Vartanian’s La Mettrie’s L’Homme Machine. The quote is taken from Vartanian’s book, page 22.

  308 Friedrich Hoffman said in 1783 that blood became thick through “debility of the brain, from long grief or fear or love.” He proposed, further, that mania and depression, long treated as two unrelated problems, “appear to be rather different stages of one; the mania being properly an exacerbation of melancholy, and leaving the patient melancholic in the calmer intervals.” He picks up on Boerhaave’s ideas in saying that melancholy was “a retardation of the circulation” and mania, “an acceleration of it.” The passages from Friedrich Hoffman may be found in his A System of the Practice of Medicine, pages 298–303.

  308 The quotations from Spinoza are from The Ethics of Spinoza, pages 139–40.

  309 For a good discussion of Bedlam, see Marlene Arieno’s Victorian Lunatics, especially pages 16–19. On Bicêtre and its most famous Dr. Philippe Pinel, see Dora Weiner’s “ ‘Le geste de Pinel’: The History of a Psychiatric Myth,” published as chapter 12 of Discovering the History of Psychiatry, edited by Mark Micale and Roy Porter.

  309 Blake’s complaint is from Roy Porter’s Mind-Forg’d Manacles, page 73.

  309 There are a multitude of general books on madness and the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. My discussion has been influenced by a variety of these including Andrew Scull’s Social Order/Mental Disorder, Michel Foucault’s Madness and Civilization, and Roy Porter’s Mind-Forg’d Manacles.

  309 The quotation from John Monro may be found in Andrew Scull’s Social Order/Mental Disorder, page 59.

  309 Depictions of some of the
most alarming-looking torture devices of the early eighteenth century are to be found in Ibid., 69–72.

  309 Boswell’s comments on mental illness, as well as his diaries and correspondence, may be found in Allan Ingram’s The Madhouse of Language, pages 146–49.