One day of grief is an hundred years, as Cardan observes: ‘Tis carnificina hominum, angor animi, as well saith Aretrus, a plague of the soul, the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell, and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart.

Robert Burton, The anatomy of melancholy, Oxford, 1638