"Melancholia is one of the great words of Psychiatry. Suffering many mutations, at one time the guardian of outworn schemes of errant theories, presently misused, cavilled at, dispossessed, it has endured into our own times, as part of medical terminology no less than of common sense" (Lewis,, 1931). A disease of antiquity, depression is £.n illness with a long ancestry. As in other instances, ...