Burton – as Democritus Junior, though with repeated references to his own biography – embeds his own experience within his text, claiming that: ‘I write of melancholy, by being busy to avoid melancholy.’ Since idleness is the great cause of the condition, there is no better preventative measure than busyness.

My mistress Melancholy
In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton gave his life to charting a Renaissance disease both alluring and dangerous