Libro De La Melancholía by Andrés Velázquez (1585). Part 2. Its Context and Importance

Abstract

The second part of this paper examines the views of the hitherto forgotten Spanish physician Andrés Velázquez on the subject of melancholy. The study was made possible by the reissue in 1996 of his book, originally published in 1585 - one of the earliest European works to deal exclusively with the subject of melancholy. Velázquez attempted to analyse the illness known as melancholy and, in order to do this, he had to explain some of the functions and structures of the human brain. His explanations about the role that the brain played as the location of thought and the substrate of the soul were based mainly on the ideas of Galen; he was also influenced by the work of other physicians and writers, including Arab writers and some of his own contemporaries.