A Well Without A Bottom

[Dave Monroe]

"... Robert Burton (1577-1640), inquiring polymath and cleric, maybe a
little more credulous concerning his sources than some, but on the
whole representative of an open-minded understanding of the world he
encountered. Burton suffered lifelong from an array of mental and
physical troubles that doctors of the time could class as melancholy,
and he set out in his huge book The Anatomy of Melancholy to collect
everything about this intractable condition, its possible cures and
alleviations, and its causes, ranging from climate and diet and the
composition of the body as determined by the sufferer’s natal stars,
to more occult possibilities. At certain points his investigation
leads him into a self-admitted Digression (lesser digressions are
frequent)."

[...]

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