Melancholia: Rare 1601 work on clinical depression.

[Depression] / [Melancholy] / Ernst Soner. ΣΥΖΗΤΗΣΙΣ De Melancholia: Quae prostate Deo Opt. Max. Archiatro; Consentiente ac jubente Amplissimo & Prudentissimo Asclepiadum in aula Basileensi procerum ordine; Hypostate M. Ernesto Sonero Noribergensi, pro Laureâ Doctorali pugnante, velitabitur In illustri Basileensium Lycaeo Die XXVII August. Horis consuetu. Basel: Typis Conradi Waldkirchij, 1601. 4to [19.0 x 14.4 cm], [12] ff., with woodcut border (signed “I. F.”) to dedication, woodcut initial. Bound in modern card, numeration in outer margin of title page suggests the piece was once part of a composite volume. Binding well preserved. Occasional minor internal spotting and staining, minor edge wear.
 
 
Rare (1 U.S. copy: Stanford) first edition of this early (1601) work on ‘melancholia,’ or what now would be called clinical depression or major depressive disorder. Melancholia—a multifaceted affliction known by several terms including furor poeticus, delirium triste, and Schwermütigkeit—became a preoccupation of medical and literary thinkers alike during the 17th century, perhaps most notably Robert Burton (1577-1640), whose The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is rivaled in melancholic fame only by Albrecht Dürer’s (1471-1528) cryptic engraving Melencolia I (1514). 
 
The ΣΥΖΗΤΗΣΙΣ [Syzētēsis] De Melancholia (1601) was written by the Basel doctoral candidate Ernst Soner (1572-1612), a native of Nuremberg. Soner draws on medical writers from Galen to Cesalpino (1524-1603), discussing in 83 numbered paragraphs etymology, symptoms in both men and women (indigestion, mania, fear, fever, delirium), bodily origins (brain, heart, guts), causes (humoral or spiritual imbalances, menstruation, heredity, etc.), prognosis, behavioral remedies (exercise, baths, sleep, dietary changes), surgical remedies, and pharmaceutical remedies (balms, purgatives, emetics, diuretics, botanicals, etc.).
 
Soner, who had been a student at Aldorf and Padua, left Basel after becoming a medical doctor, returning first to his native Nuremberg and then becoming rector at Altdorf. He is also known from his Theses de febribus (1596), Theses de sanguinis missione in genere, pro Galeno (1597), Theses medicae de sanguinis detractione per venas (1606), and De materia prima disputationes duae (1607), among other works.
 
 
OCLC and KVK locate examples at Stanford, Göttingen Universitätsbibliothek, Staatliche Bibliothek Regensburg, and Wolfenbüttel Herzog-August-Bibliothek.
 
* VD17 23:292610P.