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Black bile ((ギリシア語:µέλαινα χολή), '),〔Burton, Bk. I, p. 147〕 also lugubriousness, from the Latin ''lugere'', to mourn; moroseness, from the Latin ''morosus'', self-willed, fastidious habit; wistfulness, from old English ''wist'': intent, or saturnine, was a concept in ancient and pre-modern medicine. Melancholy was one of the four temperaments matching the four humours.〔http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/saturnine〕 In the 19th century, "melancholia" could be physical as well as mental, and melancholic conditions were classified as such by their common cause rather than by their properties. ==History== The name "melancholia" comes from the old medical belief of the four humours: disease or ailment being caused by an imbalance in one or other of the four basic bodily liquids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humor in a particular person. According to Hippocrates and subsequent tradition, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile,〔Hippocrates, (''De aere aquis et locis'', 10.103 ), on Perseus Digital Library〕 hence the name, which means "black bile", from Ancient Greek μέλας (''melas''), "dark, black",〔(μέλας ), Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library〕 and χολή (''kholé''), "bile";〔(χολή ), Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus Digital Library〕 a person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a ''melancholic'' disposition. In the complex elaboration of humorist theory, it was associated with the earth from the Four Elements, the season of autumn, the spleen as the originating organ and cold and dry as related qualities. In astrology it showed the influence of Saturn, hence the related adjective ''saturnine''. Melancholia was described as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates, in his ''Aphorisms'', characterized all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" as being symptomatic of melancholia.〔Hippocrates, ''Aphorisms'', Section 6.23〕 When a patient could not be cured of the disease it was thought that the melancholia was a result of demonic possession.〔(18th-Century Theories of Melancholy & Hypochondria )〕〔Farmer, Hugh. (An essay on demoniacs of the New Testament ) 56 (1818)〕 In his study of French and Burgundian courtly culture, Johan Huizinga〔Huizinga, "Pessimism and the ideal of the sublime life", ''The Waning of the Middle Ages'', 1924:22ff.〕 noted that "at the close of the Middle Ages, a sombre melancholy weighs on people's souls." In chronicles, poems, sermons, even in legal documents, an immense sadness, a note of despair and a fashionable sense of suffering and deliquescence at the approaching end of times, suffuses court poets and chroniclers alike: Huizinga quotes instances in the ballads of Eustache Deschamps, "monotonous and gloomy variations of the same dismal theme", and in Georges Chastellain's prologue to his Burgundian chronicle,〔"I, man of sadness, born in an eclipse of darkness, and thick fogs of lamentation".〕 and in the late fifteenth-century poetry of Jean Meschinot. Ideas of reflection and the workings of imagination are blended in the term ''merencolie'', embodying for contemporaries "a tendency", observes Huizinga, "to identify all serious occupation of the mind with sadness".〔Huizinga 1924:25.〕 Painters were considered by Vasari and other writers to be especially prone to melancholy by the nature of their work, sometimes with good effects for their art in increased sensitivity and use of fantasy. Among those of his contemporaries so characterised by Vasari were Pontormo and Parmigianino, but he does not use the term of Michelangelo, who used it, perhaps not very seriously, of himself.〔Britton, Piers, ''"Mio malinchonico, o vero... mio pazzo": Michelangelo, Vasari, and the Problem of Artists' Melancholy in Sixteenth-Century Italy'', ''The Sixteenth Century Journal'', Vol. 34, No. 3 (Fall, 2003), pp. 653-675, Article DOI: 10.2307/20061528, (JSTOR )〕 A famous allegorical engraving by Albrecht Dürer is entitled ''Melencolia I''. This engraving has been interpreted as portraying melancholia as the state of waiting for inspiration to strike, and not necessarily as a depressive affliction. Amongst other allegorical symbols, the picture includes a magic square and a truncated rhombohedron.〔(Mathworld.wolfram.com )〕 The image in turn inspired a passage in ''The City of Dreadful Night'' by James Thomson (B.V.), and, a few years later, a sonnet by Edward Dowden. The most extended treatment of melancholia comes from Robert Burton, whose ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'' (1621) treats the subject from both a literary and a medical perspective. Burton wrote in the 17th century that music and dance were critical in treating mental illness, especially melancholia.〔Cf. ''The Anatomy of Melancholy'', subsection 3, on and after line 3480, "Music a Remedy":〕 In the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert, the causes of melancholia are stated to be similar to those that cause Mania: "grief, pains of the spirit, passions, as well as all the love and sexual appetites that go unsatisfied." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Melancholia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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