Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Melancholia
Summary
Melancholia or melancholy (from μέλαινα χολή , meaning black bile) is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complaints, and sometimes hallucinations and delusions.
Melancholy was regarded as one of the four temperaments matching the four humours. Until the 18th century, doctors and other scholars classified melancholic conditions as such by their perceived common cause - an excess of a notional fluid known as "black bile", which was commonly linked to the spleen. Hippocrates and other ancient physicians described melancholia as a distinct disease with mental and physical symptoms, including persistent fears and despondencies, poor appetite, abulia, sleeplessness, irritability, and agitation. Later, fixed delusions were added by Galen and other phycisians to the list of symptoms. In the Middle Ages, the understanding of melancholia shifted to a religious perspective, with sadness seen as a vice and demonic possession, rather than somatic causes, as a potential cause of the disease.
During the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a cultural and literary cult of melancholia emerged in England, linked to Neoplatonist and humanist Marsilio Ficino's transformation of melancholia from a sign of vice into a mark of genius. This fashionable melancholy became a prominent theme in literature, art, and music of the era.
Between the late 18th and late 19th centuries, melancholia was a common medical diagnosis. In this period, the focus was on the abnormal beliefs associated with the disorder, rather than depression and affective symptoms. However, in the 20th century, the focus again shifted, and the term became used essentially as a synonym for depression. Indeed, modern concepts of depression as a mood disorder eventually arose from this historical context. Today, the term "melancholia" and "melancholic" are still used in medical diagnostic classification, such as in ICD-11 and DSM-5, to specify certain features that may be present in major depression.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.