Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Melancholia is one of the great words of psychiatry. Suffering many mutations, at one time the tenacious guardian of outworn schemes or errant theories; presently misused, cavilled at, dispossessed, it has endured into our own times, a part of medical terminology no less than of common speech. It would seem profitable to consider the history of this word, and of the states of fear and distress with which it has from the beginning been associated.
Aubrey Lewis (Mon,) studied this question.