Love is what we aspire to experience in every aspect. This feeling is crucial in life because it demonstrates how human and vulnerable we can be. We allow ourselves to be exposed. Nonetheless, historically when we reveal ourselves to someone, when we deeply love someone, and that love is unrequited, it can cause significant suffering emotionally as well as physically and psychologically. Love was studied with great depth in ancient times to decipher the pain and damage that we experience, and how our body reacts to it. Rejection has the power to create significant physical and psychological harm to an individual.
The term lovesickness comes from an old medical and literary history that unconsummated as well as unrequited love could cause physical and mental disorder. It has a variety of symptoms such as irregular pulse, fever, insomnia, insanity, and melancholy. Moreover, the Greek physician Hippocrates of Kos developed a theory called the “Humorous Theory” that stated that the body is composed of four liquids or humors: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These humors according to Hippocrates caused the body its pains and health, and any imbalance of these humors led to illness. The humors that were most associated with love were blood and black bile. Additionally, in ancient literature authors used blood to illustrate the ardent passion the character felt or black bile to represent suffering, rejection, melancholy, or loss. Peter Toohey, professor of Greek and Roman studies at the University of Calgary, introduces highly celebrated ancient physicians and explains lovesickness and its effects with a diversity of old love stories. Toohey proposes the treatments of Galen, a famous Greek physician, where he describes lovers as restless and atrophied. Galen discusses the treatment of a patient who demonstrated sleeplessness and melancholy, but the patient did not confess who was the cause of his romantic torment. However, Galen derived to the answer when he noticed that his pulse grew irregular when they mentioned the name of his beloved. Furthermore, another physical demonstration of lovesickness is fever. Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Illinois, Valeria Sobol, argues how fever becomes a form of lovesickness. It manifests fast when the illness develops, and she provides an example from an ancient text where the protagonist, Eras, is restless and refuses to eat. The doctor finds him with severe fever, insomnia, and other symptoms of lovesickness. Fever, in ancient literature, was associated with the humor of blood. Many pieces of literature demonstrated intense passion with the blood of the characters “burning” or “boiling, hence, the fever.
Another example of fever assuming a chief role in lovesickness is the heroine of the novel Evgenii Onegin. Sobol uses this story as an excellent demonstration of fever and we can observe how blood plays a role in lovesickness as well. The main character, Tat’iana, becomes feverish and sleep deprived when she falls in love with her beloved. Tat’iana’s servant misinterprets her condition as a physical illness and claims that she is “burning up” (“Post-Romantic Physiology” 506), however, Tat’iana corrects her and states “I’m… in love not ill” (“Post-Romantic Physiology” 506). Tat’tiana experiences such passionate love where her blood is “burning up” to the point that causes her fever. This can also relate to Aristotle’s imbalance of humors causing illness, her blood humor is in excess. Moreover, Sobol discusses how returned love is blissful, when it is not, it is “desperate love.” Then, Sobol illustrates the story of the protagonist of Aleksandr Klushin’s novella The Unfortunate M-v where he was so overwhelmed with his passion that caused his mental and physical destruction which led to his suicide. These examples from ancient literature depict the pain and suffering the characters undergo because of love. These examples demonstrate lovesickness and love in remarkable ways.
There were many disputes regarding whether the body and mind are connected. Sobol states that the Hippocratic humoral doctrine, which concluded the early manifestations of lovesickness, discusses how the body and mind are interconnected and how an imbalance of these humors results not only in physical disorder but also psychic. Then, Sobol provides an example where Antiochus, the son of king Seleucus I Nicator, who fell hopelessly in love with his stepmother, fell ill because the beauty of his stepmother was impregnated in his mind. This illustrates how the mind can be disastrous to the body’s health. Another example of the harm lovesickness can do psychologically to an individual is in the short story ‘Nevsky Prospect” by Nikolai Gogol. Despite the fact the character’s problem is to idealize individuals, his lovesickness brings him literal mental destruction because he cannot deal with the rejection of his beloved. The loss of the love the character imagined having caused him to overthink past scenarios and imagine requited love. However, when all of these imaginary scenarios did not seem to occur, this brought him mental destruction and ended up taking his life. Sobol discusses how some ancient texts do not have the same approach towards the illness of love. According to Sobol, these two approaches are the “medical model” and “psychological” model. The psychological model relies on the understanding of this illness in a non-medical field, whereas the medical model relies on science and medicine. For instance, Toohey introduces Greek physicians Aretaeus and Galen where they explain their thoughts of how lovesickness was not a malady that caused mental instability instead was a specific disease that was cured by performing intercourse as a therapy. Additionally, Sobol also discusses consummation as a cure. Sobol argues that if love trespasses a certain limit, then undeniably illness is to come. Also, consummation is the cure. As a result, if the chances for this solution to occur are low, then it is vital not to allow this passion to escalate to more dangerous stages. A solution to avoid more harm is to distance or distract oneself from the beloved so our body can revitalize. Sobol also explains that experts warn that if we are unable to control our passion, especially in cases of fever and participate in amorous games, it can have grave consequences because this weakens our nerves and the leading cause of illness is the weakness of our nerves.
Despite the beliefs of Aretaeus and Gale, the psychological model is the dominant model in pre-Romantic and Russian Literature because it depicts a more powerful and human aspect of an individual. For instance, Sobol introduces Heliodorus’s novel an Ethiopian Story where its heroine, Charieka, is hopelessly pining for her lover, yet she cannot say anything. Charieka’s torment preoccupies her father causing him to call numerous acclaimed physicians, but they were unable to diagnose the young lady until one physician solves the enigma and states that there is nothing medicine can do to help her case. The physician comes to a conclusion where medicine “professes to treat disorders of the body, and not, in theory, those of the soul, except when it is affected by the disorders of the body and derives benefit as the body is treated. You see, there is no excess of any humor…, is it not plain even to a child… that her disorder is one of the soul and that we have a clear case of lovesickness?” (“Post-Romantic Physiology” 504), this illustrates that lovesickness does not need to torment the individual physically, but because of its powerful effect it disturbs the soul as well. Love causes chaos within our body even if it is blissful; however, when it is not, it is destructive.
In modern times this would not be considered seriously. However, the way we react to love is not as different as in the 19th century. We pine for our beloved. We become restless because we cannot distract our mind from our object of interest. Even though we do not call it lovesickness anymore and refer to it as “heartbreak” and do not suffer from the same intensity as characters of ancient texts did. Moreover, we can experience psychological trauma nowadays as well. For instance, we always question ourselves when we are rejected by our beloved, and this can lead to obsession or compulsion until we acquire the love we long for. We still feel that burning passion and melancholia when someone does not love us back. The interpretations of love have changed, but the way we respond to it has stayed entirely intact. We still feel that burning passion when in love and melancholia when someone does not love us back.
Works Cited
Sobol, Valeria“Febris Erotica: Aleksandr Herzen’s Post-Romantic Physiology”.
Cambridge University Press, vol. 65, no. 3. Autumn 2006, pp. 502-522. https://www-jstor-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/stable/4148661?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=lovesickness&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dlovesickness%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bacc%3Don&ab_segments=0%2Ftbsub-1%2Frelevance_config_with_defaults&seq=4#metadata_info_tab_contents
Accessed 12 March 2019.
Sobol, Valeria. Febris Erotica: Lovesickness in the Russian Literary Imagination.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009. Print.
Toohey, Peter. “Love, Lovesickness, and Melancholia.” University of Illinois Press,
Accessed 5 Mar. 2019.
