“Climate, diet and physical activity (three of the six “non-natural causes”) were the main elements controlling an individual’s health8. However, a reading of descriptions of the lifestyle which is most likely to lead to being infected by love melancholy makes it clear that the disease was characteristic of a specific social class. Wine, white bread, eggs, rich meats (especially white meat and stuffed poultry), nuts and most sweets were thought to be prob- lematic. Aphrodisiac foods such as honey, exotic fruits, cakes and sweet wines were considered to be extremely dangerous.

A close look at this list reveals a diet available to and typical of only the wealthy, mainly the nobility. Sleeping in a very soft bed was also regarded as very dangerous, since it aroused lust11. Farmers were hardly likely to suffer from this problem. The writers claim that an idle lifestyle that includes excessive dining and minimal physical activity is dangerous for two reasons: first, an idle person wastes his time thinking, which dries the body and makes it melancholic; second, and much worse, idle people indulge in useless activities like plays and dances that involve both men and women and thus induce lust.

“[The disease] is most evident among such as are young and lusty, in the flower of their years, nobly descended, high-fed, such as live idly, and at ease,” writes Burton12. He scorn- fully examines the lifestyle of the nobility, which gives rise to burning desire, and hence to love melancholy. Ferrand, though not as directly critical, em- phasises the same factors and writes that “great lords and ladies are more inclined to this malady than the common people”13. Class difference, formerly only hinted at in the discussion on diet, becomes the major issue. But are young aristocratic men and women, who obviously eat and sleep better than most, more inclined to this disease by reasons of their lifestyle, or is there another cause for their distress?

Having dealt with the various therapeutic techniques, Ferrand declares: “No physician would refuse to someone suffering from erotic mania or melancholy the enjoyment of the object of desire in marriage, in accordance with both divine and human laws, because the wounds of love are cured only by those who made them.”14 Although Ferrand only deals quite briefly with this type of remedy (compared to the dozens of pages he devotes to medical therapies), he is also quite decisive. Only by union with the beloved will the patient be healed completely; but this can be achieved only in accordance with divine and human rules. In his chapter on love melancholy in married couples, Ferrand is obviously fully aware that these rules are in many cases the cause of youthful distress. Acknowledging that marriage is not a guaran- tee against the disease, he admits that love melancholy in married couples is usually the result of the animosity arising in a couple that was forced to marry and consequently sought love outside the marriage bonds”. (Michal Altbauer-Rudnik)

Ferrand declares: “No physician would refuse to someone suffering from erotic mania or melancholy the enjoyment of the object of desire in marriage, in accordance with both divine and human laws, because the wounds of love are cured only by those who made them.”    (Love, Madness and Social Order: Love Melancholy in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. Michal Altbauer-Rudnik)