#devil's bath

Medical and philosophical learning were centered in the Middle East after the classical era, and there Galenic lore was faithfully preserved by such guardians as Ishaq ibn Imran, Haly Abbas, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna). When, later, their work was translated into medieval Latin, the humoral assumptions, symptom descriptions, and associations remained. In Western Europe, meanwhile, an additional set of concerns around states of despondency and inertia had arisen. Rather than melancholy, accidia and tristitia were a reflection of moral failings, even sins. For the early Catholic Church fathers Evagrius and Cassian, listlessness and dejection were inimical to the joyful attitude befitting a Christian. As preoccupations of the medieval Christian church misogyny, witchcraft and demonology also changed how melancholia came to be attributed and understood. Melancholy was a morally dangerous state, a “devil’s bath” inviting demonic influence.