Abstract
The Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries were both characterized by drastic and sudden changes in social values. The people of both appear to have been greatly concerned about the uncertainties of their future and consequently indulged themselves in considerable introspective musings.
Treatises on depression, one dated 1621, the other 1961, were compared and one is left with the impression that we have learned very little about the aetiology of depression in the past three hundred and forty years and that the symptoms are basically unchanged.
The main difference is perhaps that in 1621 propaganda methods did not create iatrogenic problems. Modern propaganda refinements are perhaps mainly redounding to satisfy mental health enthusiasts and to benefit pharmaceutical industrialists, while offering therapeutic methods of doubtful merit and creating more anxieties to keep the vicious circle of anxieties — frustration — depression, clanging merrily around.