Tudor Medicine and the Mind: Melancholy, Music, and What Help Actually Looked Like
About this episode
This episode explores Tudor medicine and mental health, focusing on the understanding of melancholy and the social structures surrounding mental illness in Tudor England.
What happened in Tudor England when someone's mind turned against them? There was no therapist, no diagnosis, no prescription. But there was a whole system, and it was more coherent than you'd expect. We dig into the four humors as a complete theory of the mind, Timothy Bright's 1586 Treatise of Melancholie (the first English book on mental illness), music as formally prescribed medical treatment, and the social structures that made room for people who thought differently. We also look at Will Somers, Henry VIII's jester, what Bedlam actually was in the Tudor period, and why the Henry VIII personality change story is more complicated than it first appears. The Tudors were trying to make sense of suffering with the tools they had. Some of those tools were wrong. The impulse behind them is completely recognizable. Music of the Spheres episode is here: https://youtu.be/SPlfSROH4TU Will Sommers episode is here: https://youtu.be/Xs8SwqZXPxc It's Mental Health Awareness Month, and people care about you and your health. If this episode touched something personal: Call or text 988 (US) to reach the Crisis Lifeline, available 24/7. You don't have to figure it out alone. Sources: Timothy…
People in this episode
Host: Heather Teysko
Topics covered
- Tudor medicine
- mental health
- four humors
- music therapy
- historical perspectives on mental illness
- social structures in Tudor England
Keywords
- Tudor England
- melancholy
- mental illness
- music therapy
- four humors
- Henry VIII
- Will Somers
- Timothy Bright
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Crisis Lifeline, Historic England
Books & works: A Treatise of Melancholie, The Breviary of Healthe, 1536: The Year That Changed Henry VIII
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