Hysterical Melancholy: Rare early work on clinical depression in women.

[Women’s medicine] / [Depression] / [Melancholy] / Johann Friedrich Clemens / Johann Friedrich de Pré. Dissertatio inauguralis medica de Melancholia Hysterica... Erfurt: Typis Groschianis, Acad. Typogr., 1727. 4to [20.3 x 16.3 cm], 24 pp., with woodcut head-piece and initial. Decorated paper covering spine, numeration on title suggesting that the piece was once part of a composite volume. Toning to text block, minor edge wear.
 
 
Rare (2 U.S. copies: Cornell & National Library of Medicine) first and only edition of this early work on ‘hysterical melancholy,’ which is presented as a predominantly female form what now would be called clinical depression or major depressive disorder. The condition is characterized by delirium, fever, fury, fear, and agitation.
 
A certain misogyny pervades the work, e.g., in equating the uterus with Pandora’s Box (“ex utero enim, tanquam ex Pandorae Pixide” [p. 12]), by referring to the “immense appetite of Venus” (p. 13), etc.
 
Melancholia—a multifaceted affliction known by several terms including furor poeticus, delirium triste, and Schwermütigkeit—became a preoccupation of medical and literary thinkers alike during the 17th century, perhaps most notably Robert Burton (1577-1640), whose The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is rivaled in melancholic fame only by Albrecht Dürer’s (1471-1528) cryptic engraving Melencolia I (1514). 
 
The work was written by the Erfurt doctoral candidate Johann Friedrich Clemens. He discusses etymology, etiology, symptoms, bodily origins, causes, prognosis, behavioral remedies, pharmaceutical remedies, etc.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate U.S. examples at Cornell, and the National Library of Medicine.
 
* VD18 15048446.