La mélancolie en français : édition commentée du Discours des maladies mélancoliques d'André Du Laurens (1594)

It is in 1594 that Andre Du Laurens (1558-1609), professor at Montpellier University and future physician to Henri IV first published his Discours de la conservation de la vue, des maladies melancoliques, des catarrhes et de la vieillesse. The Discours des maladies melancoliques [A Discourse of Melancholic Diseases], which forms part of this volume, is the first medical guide book on melancholy written directly in French. Appearing at the end of the Renaissance, it synthesizes fifteen centuries of medical and moral knowledge on the treatment of the dreaded and yet illusory black bile, thought to be at the origin of numerous fears, sorrows, dementia and suicide attempts. It also represents the French source of (and counterpart to) Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, which was to be published only three decades later (1621). Du Laurens’ work brings together odd and often hilarious pathological descriptions with improbable therapies and prescriptions in a language which is easy to understand, and far removed from the complex medical jargon. Reprinted throughout the 17th century, but forgotten thereafter, we now present the modern reader with this unusual medical treatise from the prehistory of psychopathology, a text that will help us better grasp and understand the long genealogy of all our sorrows and modern melancholies.