Recommended by
- Thomas Edison ISBN is the 2001 NYRB Classics edition; the edition Edison read is unverified. source ↗
Summary
Robert Burton's encyclopaedic 1621 work on the causes, symptoms, and cures of melancholy (depression), ranging across medicine, astrology, theology, philosophy, and classical literature. Originally written under the pseudonym Democritus Junior, the book is a vast, digressive, and often comic compendium of human folly and suffering, cited by writers from Samuel Johnson to Jorge Luis Borges. It remains in print after four centuries as a monument of eccentric scholarship and a window into the early modern understanding of mental health.