I. Abstract
The speakers in this conference discuss Green-sickness, an illness that predominated in marriageable females and that was commonly associated with “Love-sickness.” The primary issue of debate centered around causes of the illness, which the speakers explained using contemporary medical knowledge based on the Galenic humoral theory and influenced by early modern ideas about gender. Green-sickness and love-sickness were often confused due to their similar symptoms such as heart palpitations, sleeplessness, anxiety, unhappiness, paleness, nausea, a perverse appetite, and difficulty breathing.
II. Basic Concepts
Early modern medical knowledge relied heavily on the Galenic humoral theory. Galenic theory posited that the body was composed of four humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile all of which were linked to the qualities of hot, cold, wet, and dry.[1] The mixture of humors differed by person and were determinates of their temperament. The body was composed primarily of fluids and organs collected and transmitted the humors to various extremities. Consequently, humors could build up in various places in the body and cause blockages, and “when fluid was present in excess…noxious vapors could be produced which would rise up and affect other parts of the body…”[2] Women were thought to have blood that was colder, thicker, and greater in volume than their male counterparts. This belief leant itself in determining how the mechanics of menstruation were a cause of Green-sickness.
All three speakers agreed that the primary cause of Green-sickness was the constriction of vessels involved in menstruation, which resulted in restricted blood flow and blockages. In accordance with Galenic theory, the suppressed menstrual blood would then recirculate throughout the body resulting in an imbalance of humors. “Deprav’d nutrition,” a result of not eating, poor diet, eating foods that did not encourage the production of blood, and Pica, attributed to this humoral imbalance.[3] Early modern thought proposed that food dictated the quality and quantity of blood. Therefore, Pica was often prevalent in cases of Green-sickness as the consumption of non-food items resulted in the contamination of menstrual blood and a cessation of menses. The conglomeration of excess blood in improper body cavities negatively affected the brain, which manifested in symptoms that early modern contemporaries associated with “Love-sickness.”
The historical development of Green-sickness influenced the speakers’ layered discussion and allowed for its association with “Love-sickness” and marriageable virgins. The origins of the disease harken back to classical sources in a treatise written by Hippocrates where he stated that the disorder affected pubescent girls who remained unmarried. He thus assumed that menstrual blood would be unable to leave the body until sexual intercourse had occurred. The first speaker lists the symptoms of Green-sickness as nausea, a perverse appetite, difficulty breathing, sadness, palpitations of the heart, and a change in complexion to a “colour between green and livid.” Due to similar symptoms, Green-sickness was often mistaken for love-sickness. However, the two ailments differed in that love-sickness resulted from psychological problems while Green-sickness had physiological causes. The onset of love-sickness was attributed to unrequited or unconsummated love, and was thus again similar to Green-sickness in that sexual intercourse was a prescribed cure.[4] Early modern discussion of Green-sickness originally associated it with a blood condition known as green jaundice, most prevalent among women, which included symptoms of digestive blockages, menstrual suppression, and a “bad facial color.”[5] This illness transitioned from a digestive disorder that manifested most often in women to a disease “characteristic of young girls” as the lack of menstruation became the primary cause of the disease, a combination of Galenic and Hippocratic thought.[6]
Above text authored by Celia Crifasi and Melissa Guarisco
III. Conference C.I. Of the Green-sickness
AS women have commonly more defects in mind, so their bodies are subject to more diseases then those of men; amongst which this is call’d Love-sickness, because it ordinarily happens to marriageable Virgins, and the Green-sickness (by Hippocrates, Chlorosis) from a colour between green and livid, which it imprints upon the Countenance. Yet, besides this change of the natural colour, which is red, it hath divers other symptomes, whereof the chief are a perverse appetite, call’d Malacia or Pica, Nauseousness, Tension of the Hypochondres, faintings and palpitations of the heart, difficulty of breathing, sadness, fear, languishing, weakness, and heaviness of all the members, an Oedematous humour, or bloatiness of the feet and the whole face: of which accidents those of the alteration of colour being the most perceptible, and the Pathognomonical signes of this disease have with the vulgar given the denomination to it. This malady is not to be sleighted, as people imagine; being sometimes so violent, that the peccant Humours being carri’d to the head render the Maidens distracted and mad; yea sometimes they dye suddenly of it, the heart and its vital faculty being stifled and oppress’d by it. For this symptome hurts not only the functions of one part or faculty, but invades the whole oeconomy, causing an evil habit, which degenerates into a Dropsie; especially, that which the Physitians call Leucophlegmatia or Anasarca, when the flesh like a spunge imbibes and attracts all the aqueous and excrementitious humidities. The antecedent and prime cause of this malady is the suppression of the menstrual blood; the conjunct and proximate is the collection of crude and vicious Humours in all the parts of the body which they discolour. Now when the blood which serves in women for the principle of generation becomes burdensom to nature, either by its quantity, or its quality (which happens commonly at the age of puberty) she expells it by the vessels of the womb; which if they be stop’d, that blood mingled for the most part with many other excrementitious Humours which it carries along with it, as torrents do mud, returns the same into the trunk of the hollow Vein, from thence into the Liver, Spleen, Mesentery, and other Entrails, whose natural heat it impairs, and hinders their natural functions, as concoction and Sanguification, and so is the cause of the generating of crude Humours; which being carried into all the parts of the bo∣dy, are nevertheless assimilated and so change their natural colour. Of which causes which beget those obstructions in the Vessels of the Matrix, the chief are, a Phlegmatick and viscous blood commonly produc’d by bad food, as Lime, Chalk, Ashes, Coals, Vinegar, Corn, and Earth, which young Girles purposely eat to procure that complexion, out of a false perswasion that it makes them handsomer. Yet this malady may happen too from a natural conformation, the smalness and closeness of the aforesaid Vessels; whence the fat and Phlegmatick (as the pale are) are more subject to it then the lean and brown.
The Second said, ‘Tis an opinion so universally receiv’d that the Green-sickess comes from Love, that those who fight under his Standards affect this colour, as his liveries. But ’tis most appropriate to Maidens, as if nature meant to write in their faces what they so artificially conceal, and supply for their bashfulness by this dumb language. Where unto their natural Constitution conduecs much, being much colder then that of men; which is the cause that they beget abundance of superfluous blood, which easily corrupts, either by the mixture of some humour, or for want of free motion (like standing waters, and inclos’d air) and infects the skin, the universal Emunctory of all the parts, but especially that of the face, by reason of its thinness and softness. And as obstructions are the cause, so opening things are the remedies of this malady; as the filings of Steel prepar’d, Sena, Aloes, Myrrhe, Safron, Cinamon, roots of Bryony and Birth-worth, Hysope, wild Mecury, the leaves and flowers of Marigold, Broom flowers, Capers, &c.
The Third said, That the vulgar opinion, that all Green-sickness is from Love, is a vulgar errour. For though the Poet writes that every Lover is pale, yet hatred causes paleness too; and the consequence cannot be well made from a passion to a habit. Besides, little Girles of seven and eight years old are troubled with this disease, and you cannot think them capable of love; no more then that ’tis through want of natural Purgation in others after the age of puberty; for women above fifty yeers old, when that Purgation ceases, have something of this malady. Yea men too have some spices of it sometimes; and yet the structure of their parts, being wholly different from that of females, allows not the assigning of the same cause in both. Yea did the common conceit hold good that those who have small vessels, and (as such) capable of obstruction, are most subject to it; yet the contrary will follow to what is inferr’d to their prejudice. For they will be the less amorous, because the lesser vessels have the lesser blood, which is the material cause of Love, to which we see Sanguine complexions are most inclin’d.
IV. Further Reading
Cole, Richard G. “In Search of a New Mentality: The Interface of Academic and Popular Medicine in the Sixteenth Century.” The Journal of Popular Culture 26, no. 4 (1993): 155-72.
Hindson, B. “Attitudes Towards Menstruation and Menstrual Blood in Elizabethan England.” Journal of Social History 43, no. 1 (2009): 89-114.
King, Helen. The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty. London: Routledge, 2004.
Loudon, I. S. “Chlorosis, Anaemia, and Anorexia Nervosa.” Bmj 281, no. 6256 (1980): 1669-675.
Schleiner, Winfried. “Early Modern Green Sickness and Pre-Freudian Hysteria.” Early Science and Medicine 14, no. 5 (2009): 661-76.
Toohey, Peter. “Love, Lovesickness, and Melancholia.” Illinois Classical Studies 17, no. 2 (1992): 265-86.
[1] Helen King, The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty, London: Routledge, 2004, 22.
[2] King, The Disease of Virgins, 23.
[3] King, The Disease of Virgins, 97.
[4] Peter Toohey, “Love, Lovesickness, and Melancholia,” Illinois Classical Studies 17, no. 2 (1992): 265-86. http://www.jstor.org.
[5] King, The Disease of Virgins, 25.
[6] King, The Disease of Virgins, 29.