From Andre du Laurens‘ 1594 treatise Discours de la conservation de la veuë: des maladies melancoliques: des catarrhes, & de la vieillesse, englished in 1599 by Richard Surphlet as A discourse of the preservation of the sight of melancholike diseases of rheumes and of old age:
The pleasantest dotage that euer I read, was of one Sienois a Gentleman, who had resolued with himselfe not to pisse, but to dye rather, and that because he imagined, that when he first pissed, all his towne would be drowned. The Phisitions shewing him, that all his bodie, and ten thousand moe such as his, were not able to containe so much as might drowne the least house in the towne, could not change his minde from this foolish imaginati∣on. In the end they seeing his obstinacie, and in what danger he put his life, found out a pleasant inuention. They caused the next house to be set on fire, & all the bells in the town to ring, they per∣swaded diuerse seruants to crie, to the fire, to the sire, & therewith∣all send of those of the best account in the town, to craue helpe, and shew the Gentleman that there is but one way to saue the towne, and that it was, that he should pisse quickelie and quench the sire. Then this sillie melancholike man which abstained from pissing for feare of loosing his towne, taking it for graunted, that it was now in great hazard, pissed and emptied his bladder of all that was in it, and was himselfe by that meanes preserued.
This was cited in Mary Ann Lund’s A User’s Guide to Melancholy, a book which is (to me) wrongly taken as an introduction to Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. It feels more an onramp, a brief overview of the renaissance conception of melancholy and the medical theories behind that conception. I think the same is achieved just as effectively by several other books that also provide broader overviews – Matthew Bell’s Melancholia: The Western Malady and Stanley Jackson’s Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times – but this one does have the benefit of sustained connection to the text and its author if you’re looking for the confidence to pick up Burton. There’s a Guardian review here and a far better (but paywalled) TLS here.
Extracts 