The Doctor’s Visit: Aspects of Love Melancholy in Seventeenth-century England

In seventeenth-century England, love-sickness, or love melancholy, spread like an epidemic. This is witnessed by Thimotie Bright’s Treatise of Melancholy (1586) and, above all, by the third part of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, that is dedicated to ‘love melancholy’. In retracing the history of this disease from Seventeenth-century England to the contemporary findings of neuro-sciences, the essay investigates the function of images and fantasy, of arts and philosophy, in its genesis and therapies.