Diagnosing Desire: Bodily Signs of Lovesickness in Early Modern Problem Literature

Abstract

The medical understanding of lovesickness in the Early Modern period emerged from the convergence of several intellectual traditions, including Hippocratic and Galenic diagnostics, medieval theories of amor hereos, and natural-philosophical problem literature. This article examines how Spanish physician-authors writing in the vernacular popularized and transformed medical knowledge about the bodily signs of erotic passion through the genre of the problem book. Focusing on works by Francisco López de Villalobos, Juan de Jarava, Agustín de Ruescas, and Alonso López de Corella, it analyzes the symptoms most frequently associated with lovesickness, such as alterations of the pulse, insomnia, sighing, emaciation, and changes in the eyes and complexion. By contextualizing these texts within both ancient and medieval medical traditions, the study demonstrates how problem literature functioned as a vehicle for disseminating complex medical theories to a broader readership. The conclusion shows how this medical lore could be reworked in a playful and ironic manner in literary texts such as La pícara Justina, where conventional symptoms of lovesickness become the object of parody.

1. Introduction: What Is Love?

In the twenty-first century, scientists seek to understand the nature of love through the methods and explanatory models of their respective disciplines. Studies such as “The Biochemistry of Love: An Oxytocin Hypothesis” (Carter and Porges 2012), “The Neuroendocrinology of Love” (Seshadri 2016), or “Love is a Physiological Motivation (Like Hunger, Thirst, Sleep or Sex)” (Burunat 2019) testify to the enduring scientific fascination with human desire, attachment, and emotional behaviour. Drawing on current medical research, Gazzaniga (2013, p. 538) explains the symptoms of lovesickness through a serotonin deficiency and emphasizes that “la diagnostica per immagini dimostra che nella sofferenza d’amore si attivano le medesime aree cerebrali coinvolte nel dolore fisico” [“brain imaging demonstrates that the same cerebral areas involved in physical pain are activated in emotional suffering caused by love”]. Much as neuroscientists and endocrinologists today explore the physiological and biochemical foundations of love, Early Modern physicians likewise attempted to define its nature through the medical knowledge of their own time. They not only speculated about the essence of love, but also developed diagnostic frameworks through which lovesickness could be recognized in the body and interpreted through its visible symptoms.1 In doing so, they revived and combined a variety of older traditions: the diagnostic practices of Hippocrates and Galen, who identified hidden passions through visible bodily signs such as changes in facial colour and pulse; the pseudo-Aristotelian association between erotic desire and black bile, further developed in medieval concepts of amor hereos as a pathological condition. After a brief overview of these different discursive traditions, deliberately leaving aside Neoplatonic theories of love, the following study will examine how Early Modern physician-writers, drawing on this intellectual background, used the problem-book genre to investigate the physiological effects of erotic passion and to disseminate medical knowledge about love.2

2. The Pathology of Love

2.1. Hidden Passions and Visible Symptoms from Hippocrates to Galen

The history of medicine preserves numerous case narratives in which renowned physicians diagnosed the secretly concealed lovesickness of high-ranking patients through the observation of physical symptoms and involuntary bodily signs. According to the 2nd-century CE biography of Hippocrates by Soranus of Ephesus, the physician from Cos is said to have cured unrequited love of the Macedonian king Perdiccas II (450–413 BCE), who had fallen in love with one of his father’s concubines.3

Hippocrates interpreted by certain signs that the affliction was psychic in origin. For after the death of Alexander, his father, Perdiccas fell in love with his mistress Phila. Hippocrates explained the situation to her after he caught Perdiccas changing colour when he looked at her. He freed him from his illness and revived him.

(apud Pinault 1992, p. 7)

A quite similar episode is related of Erasistratus (c. 304–250 BCE), who uncovered the cause of Prince Antiochus’ mysterious illness by observing changes in his pulse and recognising the young Seleucid’s concealed love for his stepmother Stratonice.4 The story was recounted by numerous ancient authors, including Appian of Alexandria and Valerius Maximus, yet a particular interest in the symptoms of lovesickness emerges only in Plutarch’s Life of Demetrius. Drawing on Sappho’s celebrated catalogue of the signs of love, Plutarch observes that all these “tell-tale signs” could be recognised in Antiochus: “stammering speech, fiery flushes, darkened vision, sudden sweats, irregular palpitations of the heart, and finally, as his soul was taken by storm, helplessness, stupor, and pallor” (Plutarch 1959, pp. 93–95). It was Lucian, however, who considerably expanded the anecdote by introducing explicit medical detail in The Syrian Goddess. He vividly describes the physical deterioration of the lovesick prince: “He lay there, though in no pain, and his complexion completely changed colour and his body atrophied daily” (Lightfoot 2003, p. 257). Lucian further enumerates characteristic symptoms such as weakened eyes and voice, changes in the complexion, and frequent tears. The sight of his stepmother then provokes an acute bodily reaction: “his complexion changed colour, he began to sweat, he was overcome by trembling, and his heart pounded” (Lightfoot 2003, p. 259).

What these anecdotes clearly foreground is the portrayal of an eminent physicians as acute diagnosticians, capable of drawing far-reaching conclusions from a single sign, be it a change in pulse or facial colour. The “experimental approach” (Mesulam and Perry 1972, p. 548) is what captures Galen’s attention. In contrast to earlier accounts, he narrates the episode in the first person, integrating it into a broader strategy of self-presentation designed to underscore his own diagnostic acumen (see Pinault 1992, p. 69; Gourevitch 2012; Luccioni 2016; Thumiger 2018, p. 265). In On Prognosis, the physician from Pergamon recounts the episode of Erasistratus and places alongside it a case from his own medical practice: the unrequited love of the wife of Justus for the dancer Pylades. In this account the lovesick patient is a woman, whose condition is likewise revealed by the telltale signs of her pulse. Here, the medical details of the diagnostic process come more clearly into focus: once fever is ruled out as a cause and insomnia is identified through anamnesis as one of the symptoms, Galen arrives at an initial conclusion: “On my departure I decided she was suffering from one of two things: from a depression caused by black bile or from some worry she was unwilling to confess” (Galen 1979, pp. 101–3). This should by no means be taken as an equation of melancholia with lovesickness: the humoral-pathological explanation of the woman’s condition clearly stands as an alternative to the psychosomatic one. As Galen continues his account, grief becomes an increasingly plausible explanation in his view. Famously, it is by chance that he uncovers the true cause, leading to a moment in which his description of the physical changes in the lovesick woman becomes particularly revealing:

Her expression and facial colour changed, and observing this and putting my hand on her wrist, I found that her pulse had suddenly become irregular in several ways, which indicates that the mind is disturbed: the same happens to those who are entering any sort of contest.

(Galen 1979, p. 103)

What truly matters to Galen is to refute the notion of a specific ‘pulse of the lovesick.’ Rather, he insists that it is the more general insight, that the body tends to be affected by mental conditions, an insight Erasistratus also possessed, that allows the physician to infer a disturbance of the mind from a change in the pulse.5 These anecdotes also point to the ways in which physicians in antiquity already made use of literature, of storytelling, as a tool within their professional practice. It is important to emphasize that we learn very little about the pathology itself and virtually nothing about any form of therapeutic intervention.

2.2. When Love Turns Melancholic: Amor Hereos

The equation of lovesickness with melancholy, which later became commonplace among medieval physicians, cannot be traced back to the great medical authorities of antiquity and is found neither in Hippocrates nor in Galen.6 It was perhaps the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata that first suggested this association. In Problem 30, black bile is described as both hot and cold and as rich in air, a property thought to explain the pronounced lustfulness often attributed to melancholics, since sexual pleasure itself was believed to arise from excess of air in the body.7 It is therefore to the pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, rather than to ancient medical theory, that the medical definition of lovesickness as a form of melancholia can most plausibly be traced (McNamara 2016, p. 315; Thumiger 2018, p. 264), with the lost treatise On Melancholy by Rufus of Ephesus perhaps serving, as McVaugh (1985, pp. 16–17) suggests, as an intermediary link.

The concept of amor hereos, together with its connection to black bile, was transmitted through the Arabic medical tradition. A key role in its introduction into the Latin West was played by Constantine the African through his translation of Ibn al-Jazzar’s Viaticum, a practical medical handbook on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases (Wack 1990). The undoubtedly most influential definition and depiction of the illness is found in Avicenna’s (c. 980–1037) chapter De ilisci (a term transliterated by Gerard of Cremona from the Arabic word al-‘ishq), in which he defines lovesickness as a disorder caused by black bile:

Haec aegritudo est sollicitudo melancholica, similis melancholiae, in qua homo sibi iam induxit incitationem cogitationis suae super pulchritudinem quarumdam formarum et figurarum quae insunt ei. [This illness is a melancholic affliction, similar to melancholy, in which a person has already internalized an obsessive fixation on the beauty of certain forms and appearances].

(Avicenna 1505, f. 151^v)

Among the key symptoms of lovesickness, Avicenna lists a deep gaze, dryness of the eyes, except during bouts of weeping, restless eyelid movement, and general physical dryness. The eyes appear heavy and swollen as a result of insomnia and frequent crying, while the facial features become distorted. The pulse, irregular and erratic, can even be used to identify the object of desire.8

As is well known, Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine was a standard medical encyclopaedia in medieval and Early Modern times (Siraisi 1987), and his discussion of lovesickness was extremely influential. Medieval European authors such as Arnau de Vilanova and Bernard de Gordon9 deliberately drew on Avicenna’s teachings and largely repeated and adapted his theories when discussing the pathology they call amor heroicus or amor hereos.

The Catalan physician, often described as the author of what we might call the first medical monograph on love, composed his Tractatus de amore heroico between 1276 and 1286. Written in the form of a letter to a Sardinian physician friend, the treatise responds to the latter’s question concerning the causes of the vehement and irrational movement of concupiscence characteristic of heroic love.10 Scholarship has examined the text primarily with regard to its faculty-psychological account of the genesis of love. Paragraph III addresses the signa that may serve the physician as diagnostic indicators of this disturbance. The incessant storm of thoughts gives rise to persistent insomnia, and from this state of wakefulness all its further effects in turn ensue.

Macerantur igitur hiis de causis corporis membra, precipue rariora et molliora et ea que magis sunt resolutioni subiecta, quamobrem facies extenuatur et oculi concavantur et efficiuntur solito sicciores […]. [Thus, for these reasons, the limbs of the body are consumed, especially those that are more delicate and soft and more susceptible to wasting away. Consequently, the face grows thin and the eyes become hollow and drier than usual.]

(Arnaldus 1985, p. 52)

Furthermore, it is observed that the increase of yellow bile causes the complexion to assume a yellowish hue. The lovers’ sighs are explained physiologically as arising when vapours long retained within escape outward.11 Arnau also discusses the pulse, which changes perceptibly whenever the lover encounters (or merely hears mention of) the desired person.12 Black bile is mentioned only briefly at the beginning of paragraph IV, without assuming a central role in the pathology of the disease.13 Arnaldus’ treatise circulated through the various editions of his Opera omnia, beginning with the one printed in Lyon in 1504, but unlike the work of Gordonius, it was not translated into the vernacular. The latter’s Spanish translation, the Lilio de medicina (1495), circulated widely and exerted considerable influence on literary culture; modern scholarship has, for instance, demonstrated its impact on Fernando de Rojas’ La Celestina. In Chapter 10 of Book II, Gordonius defines amor hereos, like Avicenna before him, as a “solicitud melancólica”. His description of the symptoms likewise follows those outlined by the Persian physician and by Arnaldus, including insomnia, emaciation, and sunken eyes. Alterations of the pulse are likewise mentioned, interestingly through an explicit appeal to Galen.

De esta manera conoció Galeno la pasión de un mancebo enfermo que estaba echado en una cama muy triste y delgado; tenía el pulso débil y desordenado y no se lo quería decir a Galeno. [In this manner Galen recognised the passion of a sick young man who lay in bed, deeply sorrowful and emaciated; his pulse was weak and irregular, and he did not wish to reveal his condition to Galen.]

(Gordonio [1495] 1993, p. 523)

The story then continues in the familiar manner, though it should be recalled that the Pergamene physician originally diagnosed a woman (Crohns 1905, p. 81). For Gordonius, by contrast, lovesickness is defined as a specifically male condition, which allows him to adapt the ancient source without difficulty to his own purposes, namely the cure of a lovesick man:

Por eso, si alguien quiere saber el nombre de la mujer que ama, nómbrele muchas mujeres y, cuando se nombra a aquélla que ama, en seguida el pulso se alterará de inmediato y, una vez sabido de quien se trata, dígale que se separe de ella. [Therefore, if someone wishes to know the name of the woman a man loves, many women should be named to him; when the beloved’s name is spoken, his pulse will immediately change, and once her identity has been discovered, he should be told to separate himself from her.]

(Gordonio [1495] 1993, p. 523)

This introductory and necessarily very concise overview of the symptoms of lovesickness from a medical perspective already shows that a variety of different scientific and textual traditions are at work here, creating a remarkably complex picture, even if the symptoms themselves may seem fairly self-evident. It is likewise striking that fever, a manifestation modern culture readily associates with love, plays virtually no role in these medical accounts. As Wack (1990, p. XIII) rightly observes, “diseases like lovesickness are culturally constructed”; one may therefore speak, with Ciavolella (2022, p. 297), of an “intellectual substructure” that remains to be uncovered.

3. Love in Problem Literature

3.1. The Genre of Problem Books

The problem literature of the 16th century ultimately traces back to the Quaestiones Salernitanae (around 1200) and the aforementioned pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, which were rediscovered around 1300. As Lawn (1963, p. 3) remembers, the “Stagirite was imitated at the beginning of the second century by the Greek physician Soranus, about a century later by Cassius the Iatrosophist, and still later by pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias”. The latter problem book is of particular interest to us as it contains several reflections on love and sexuality.14 Pseudo-Alexander of Aphrodisias addresses questions such as why castrated men continue to desire sexual pleasure (1554, f. 142^r-v), why those afflicted by love experience their extremities as alternately cold and hot (1554, f. 153^r–154^r), and why lovers sigh (1554, f. 143^v–144^r) (see Biesterfeldt and Gutas 1984, p. 22). Groaning occurs, according to Alexander, because intense emotional concentration causes the soul to neglect the normal movement of the chest, forcing the heart to provoke deeper breaths in order to cool itself and expel harmful vapours. He furthermore establishes a connection with the pulse when he states that what respiration is in the chest corresponds in the rest of the body to the movement of the vital spirit through the arteries: inhalation corresponds to expansion, exhalation to contraction, while the sphygmus, that is, the pulse, consists precisely in this expansion and contraction of the heart and arteries. When the physician Mathurin Héret (1518–1585) translated the work into French in 1555, he not only supplemented the collection with several problems of his own,15 but also expanded the text with additional medical lore. In his discussion of sighing, for instance, the physiological focus shifts from the thorax to the stomach:

Le cœur adonc par extension et dilatation de l’estomac ne recevant plus l’aer de dehors, par lequel il puisse estre éventé et refroidi: ne pouvant aussi par la contraction de l’estomac séparer d’avec lui et mettre hors les excrémens fumeux, causés de la chaleur du sang, de peur d’estre suffoqué, incite et admonneste l’esprit de faire son office, lequel il avoit délaissé, qui est de donner mouvement aux muscles de l’estomac, pour faire plus grande inspiration et expiration, afin qu’il puisse percevoir plus largement la froideur de l’aer et purger ses excrémens, en sorte que par bien grande et ample respiration l’on recouvre ce que plusieurs petites et fréquentes respirations eussent peu faire. [The heart, then, no longer receiving through the extension and dilation of the stomach the external air by which it might be ventilated and cooled, and likewise being unable through the contraction of the stomach to separate from itself and expel the smoky excrements caused by the heat of the blood, for fear of being suffocated, incites and admonishes the spirit to perform the office it had neglected, namely to impart movement to the muscles of the stomach so as to produce a greater inspiration and expiration. In this way, it may more abundantly receive the coolness of the air and purge its excrements, such that one deep and ample breath accomplishes what many small and frequent respirations would otherwise have done.]

(Alexander of Aphrodisias 1555, f. 12^v)

Furthermore, he provides his readers with medical bibliography in the marginal glosses, referring on the one hand to “Gal. aux livres de la difficulté de respiration, spécialement au li. 1, cha. 11 et au li. 2, chap. 7 traite bien amplement ceste question” (1555, f. 12^v), and on the other to “Gal. aux livres De pulsibus” (1555, f. 13^r). Latin translations of Galen’s works on respiration had appeared shortly before Héret’s text, namely the 1533 version translated by Johannes Vassaeus (Paris: Simon de Colines) and the 1536 edition translated by Janus Cornarius (Basel: Hieronymus Froben). Likewise, Galen’s sphygmological treatises appeared repeatedly in Latin editions during the first half of the sixteenth century, as Johnston and Papabramidu (2023, pp. 56–58), document. This demonstrates how the physician-translator enriches the problem book with contemporary medical lore.

3.2. Girolamo Manfredi and the Emergence of Vernacular Problem Literature

In the Early Modern period, physicians were not only translators of problem books, but also authors of original collections of problems. A prominent example is Girolamo Manfredi (1430–1493), whose Liber de homine or Il Perché (1474) went through numerous editions and was translated into Catalan in 1499 and into Castilian in 1567 by Pedro de Ribas (Manfredi [1567] 2009), though the sections on sexuality were omitted from this version.16 This concerns twenty-nine problems from chapter 5 of book I, loosely arranged around themes such as coitus and its effects on the eyes and vision, ejaculation and the nature of semen, and reflections on the sexual behaviour of animals in comparison with humans. Several questions that would continue to resonate in a wide range of later contexts are already addressed by Manfredi, such as why coitus is exceedingly pleasurable, why women experience greater pleasure in coitus than men, or why melancholics are considered particularly lustful. The explanation Manfredi offers recalls arguments attributed to Pseudo-Aristotle:

I melenconici adusti son pieni de molta ventosità, per essere il suo humido molto infiammato dal’excelente caldo ch’è in loro, de che se genera molta ventosità ressoluta da quel’humido per il forte caldo. E dove è ventosità lì è molta incitatione de libidine e spessa expulsione de sperma. [Adust melancholics are full of windiness, because their moisture is greatly inflamed by the excessive heat that is in them, from which there is generated much windiness released from that moisture through the strong heat. And where there is windiness, there is great incitement of lust and frequent emission of semen.]

(Manfredi [1474] 1988, p. 147)

Another question that would remain influential in later centuries concerns why an intense sexual life was thought to cause alopecia. Manfredi explains this through the loss of nourishment and vital heat caused by coitus: deprived of blood and spirits, the upper parts of the body can no longer properly digest nourishment or generate the vapours necessary for the growth of hair (Manfredi [1474] 1988, p. 147).

3.3. Problem Books in Early Modern Spain

It was in Spain that the problem-book genre, a form of question-and-answer literature addressing problems of natural philosophy and medicine, evolved into one of the most prolific and widely circulated forms of vernacular scientific writing.17 Many of these works were composed by physicians such as Francisco López de Villalobos (1473–1549), Juan de Jarava, Agustín de Ruescas, and Alonso López de Corella (c. 1513–1584), all of whom engaged with the subject of love from a variety of perspectives.

3.3.1. Villalobos’ Problemas in Dialogue with Plautus

Francisco López de Villalobos, a descendant of a converso family with a strong medical tradition, received his medical education at the University of Salamanca, graduating in the final years of the 15th century, a period during which Avicenna reigned supreme as the ultimate authority in the medical field. At the young age of just 25 he published in Salamanca El sumario de la medicina (1498), in which he dedicates a chapter to lovesickness, listed under the heading: “On the illness of love, which Avicenna called ilisci and the Greeks called hereos” (López de Villalobos 1498, f. A4v). As Cátedra (1989, pp. 62–65) has emphasized, the author distances himself from established medical authorities on the subject, most notably Avicenna, who is explicitly cited, and Bernard of Gordon. Significantly, melancholy is entirely absent. The fourth of the seven coplas deals with the symptoms of lovesickness in the section entitled De las señales que se muestran cuando alguno está enamorado [On the signs displayed by someone who is in love]. The patient is described as abandoning his usual occupations and losing both sleep and appetite. He is consumed by grief, sighs, and countless irrational thoughts, seeks solitude, and weeps incessantly without relief. His physical condition deteriorates visibly: he loses strength and colour, bursts into tears whenever love is mentioned, and his pulse becomes weak and irregular (“el pulso es sin orden y mucho menor”, López de Villalobos 1498, f. A5^r).

A markedly different treatment of lovesickness can be found in Villalobos’s Libro intitulado los problemas, published in 1543. The miscellany brings together a section of Problemata divided into two parts (six questions on natural bodies and thirty-five on human customs)18 alongside three dialogues, a treatise, a poetic composition, and the first Castilian translation of Plautus’s Amphitruo,19 accompanied by a short treatise on love intended to facilitate a fuller understanding of the final scene of the tragicomedy.20 As is well known, the play ends with the reconciliation of the deceived couple. Alcumena forgives her husband, attributing his madness to the intensity of his love, while Amphitruo attempts to justify his jealousy. In the sentencias, Villalobos offers, among other perspectives, a medical explanation for both the madness of the lover (Chapter VI) and jealousy (Chapter VII). As Folger (2002, pp. 45–46) has shown, the theory of the brain’s ventricles, elaborated by Arnau de Vilanova, functions here as an scientific subtext. Baranda (2015, p. 216), recalling Villalobos’ reference to his Latin Congressiones (1514), underscores that the medical background remains unmistakably present and that the didactic dimension of the comedy is filtered through both the medical and literary traditions already evoked in the Sumario.21 In Chapter VI, devoted to amorous derangement, he discusses the pulse in far greater detail than in his Sumario:

Para darte a entender este capítulo es menester enseñarte primero algunos principios y fundamentos de filosofía y de medicina. Has de saber que aquello que tú sientes bullir dentro del pulso cuando le tocas es un cuerpo sutil y delicado que allí anda como aire o vapor, al cual los naturales llaman espíritu. Éste mora dentro del corazón, y de allí parte y corre por todos los miembros del cuerpo. [In order to help you understand this chapter, it is necessary first to teach you some basic principles of philosophy and medicine. You must know that what you feel pulsing beneath the skin when you touch the pulse is a subtle and delicate substance that moves there like air or vapor, which natural philosophers call spirit. This spirit dwells within the heart and from there flows through all the limbs of the body.]

(López de Villalobos [1543] 2004, p. 80)

Villalobos addresses a readership without medical training, seeking to convey sphygmological knowledge through the tangible, bodily experience of touch.

It is striking that Villalobos follows his own path: he distances himself from the standard explanation of love in terms of black bile, adopts an ironic tone, as has been pointed out by scholars, and at times seems more interested in literature than in medicine.22 Rather than using the question-and-answer structure typical of problem books, he turns to medical theories of love as a tool for interpreting a literary text.23

3.3.2. Juan de Jarava’ Problemas: A Spanish Encounter with Italian Humanism

Much like Villalobos, Juan de Jarava, a physician publishing in Antwerp, conceived his Problemas o preguntas problemáticas (1544 and 1546) as a miscellany in which the problems are combined with other texts, more specifically with Castilian versions of works by Lucian, Phaeder, Jacobus de Reno, and Celio Calcagnini (Vian 1988).24 With regard to the theme of love, the Diálogo del viejo y del mancebo que disputan de amor is of particular importance. As shown in Gernert (2023a, p. 317), an intratextual connection exists between this translation of Jacobus de Reno’s Dialogus senis et iuvenis (1491) and the Preguntas problemáticas, although the links between the two sections remain rather loose, most notably in their shared characterization of love as a disease.25

The preguntas problemáticas themselves are largely a translation of Niccolò Leonico Tomeo’s Quæstiones quædam naturales cum amatoriis problematibus XX (1525), a point briefly noted by Sanz Hermida (2017, p. 221, note 9). Nineteen of the twenty questions on love and seventy-nine of the 226 Demandas naturales derive from the Italian Hellenist, who, as Fortuna (2010, p. 324) observes, follows classical models in his Problemata.26 In keeping with the conventions of the genre, they address a broad variety of topics. Like Girolamo Manfredi, the author raises strikingly physical and specific questions about the sexual act, such as why the eyes swell and grow moist during intercourse, and why, at the very peak of desire, lovers may suddenly become impotent and unable to fulfil it. As in Villalobos’s writings, some explanations are grounded in faculty psychology, as in the discussion of why lovers so rarely see the image of the beloved in their dreams. The work also discusses symptoms of lovesickness relevant to our inquiry, such as insomnia (Jarava 1544, ff. A8^r–B1^r), tearfulness (f. B4^v), and irritability (ff. B8^r–C1^r), by referring to the foundational framework of the four elemental qualities: hot, cold, dry, and moist. Jarava also examines the cause of the yellowish complexion characteristic of lovers, already observed by Arnau de Vilanova (ff. B3^v–B4^v).27

Only the final question, “Why is love regarded and treated as an affection and an illness of the head?”, has no equivalent in the work of Leonico Tomeo and may represent Jarava’s original addition. It is particularly noteworthy not only for this reason, but also because it addresses one of our central themes, namely the pulse. The question of where love is located in the body has been debated by physicians throughout history.28 This tradition, however, does not interest Jarava. Instead, he argues that the senses, which occupy a central place in Arnau de Vilanova’s theory, are located in the head, and he then lists the well-known symptoms affecting the eyes, already familiar from Avicenna.

La causa es: porque el amor no es otra cosa que un cuidado muy grande, y por esto no se pone mal entre las afeciones de la cabeza, en la cual están los sentidos. Y el cuidado no es otra cosa que una afeción del ánimo estando ocupada la razón. Los que están verdaderamente enamorados suelen mostrar tales señales: tienen los ojos hundidos y que no les lloran, pero parecen estar llenos de deleite y alegres; continuo mueven las pestañas. Y como ninguna otra parte del cuerpo no se disminuya ni caiga de su ser, solos los ojos se mudan mucho. El pulso de las arterias en ellos es muy pequeño o ninguno, como muchos creyeron. Pero cuando les vienen al pensamiento la cosa que aman o que la oyen o la veen, principalmente súbitamente y sin pensar entonces con el ánimo turbado, se les muda el pulso y no guarda la natural igualdad ni orden que suele. [The cause is this: love is nothing other than a very great inner sorrow, and for this reason it is not placed among the affections of the head, in which the senses reside. And inner sorrow is nothing other than an affection of the soul, in which reason is occupied. Those who are truly in love usually show the following signs: they have sunken eyes that do not weep, yet they seem full of delight and cheerful; they constantly move their eyelids. And as no other part of the body diminishes or loses its natural state, only the eyes change greatly. The pulse of the arteries in them is very small or none, as many have believed. But when the thing they love comes to their mind, or when they hear of it or see it, especially suddenly and unexpectedly, then, with the soul disturbed, their pulse changes and no longer keeps the natural equality and order that it normally has.]

(Jarava 1544, ff. C5^v–C6^r)

What is rather curious is that he subsequently turns to the pulse in the arteries of the eyes, thereby creating a transition to the pulse diagnostics.

When dealing with such compilations of disparate themes, it is important not only to pay attention to what is included, but also, crucially, to what is left out. One notable absence in Jarava, as in the case of Villalobos, is any mention of melancholy.

3.3.3. A Dialogised Problem Book in Verse: Centiloquio de Problemas

Two years after Jarava, Agustín de Ruescas, of whom little is known beyond the fact that he was a physician, published his Diálogo en verso intitulado Centiloquio de Problemas (Ruescas 1546).29 A second edition, supposedly published in 1548, is believed to have existed, but no trace of it has been found. This is a remarkable problem book in many respects: it is written in verse and structured as a dialogue between the curious Pamphilo and his teacher Protidemo. The text is further enriched with Latin marginal notes, adding another layer of learned commentary. The Centiloquio addresses a wide range of topics, but only seven questions touch on love in the broadest sense. Of these, two (concerning the appearance of the beloved in dreams and the habit of lovers carrying flowers) closely resemble questions also found in Leonico Tomeo and Jarava, although neither source is mentioned in the marginal notes. Ruescas frequently cites the medieval Paduan physician Pietro d’Abano as an authority. This is also the case in Problem 48, which asks why children conceived through adultery or fearful fornication are born naturally corrupt and profoundly depraved, a question of particular interest in relation to Guzmán de Alfarache and notions of inherited moral degeneration in the rogue figure. As for the symptoms, only one is addressed, namely the frequent sighing of lovers, already discussed by Arnau de Vilanova and Girolamo Manfredi.

Subjectos al cruel amar

tantas de pasiones cobran

si has oído

que olvidan el respirar

y sospirando recobran

lo perdido.

[Those subjected to cruel love

become afflicted by so many passions

that, as you have heard,

they forget to breathe,

and through sighing recover

what they had lost.]

(Ruescas 1546, f. E1^v)

Ruescas considerably simplifies the theory that explains sighing as the result of disordered breathing, adopting a ludic approach to medical knowledge through extreme condensation and the distinctive rhythm of the copla de pie quebrado.

3.3.4. A Love Treatise Within a Problem Book: Alonso López de Corella

Alonso López de Corella was born around 1517 in Corella, Navarra, into a family of physicians. He studied arts and medicine in Salamanca, earning his bachelor’s degree there and later his licentiate in Alcalá around 1542. He first practiced in Cornago and, after 1560, settled in Tarazona, where he served as physician to both the town and the cathedral chapter until his death in 1584. His first work, Secretos de filosofía y medicina puestos a manera de porqué, stands out as a rather curious example of the genre: a problem book in which the 750 questions, formulated in verse, receive no answers.30 Published in 1539, the work antedates the texts by Villalobos, Jarava, and Ruescas discussed in the preceding chapters. It is possible that these later contributions prompted the author to revisit and respond to some of the questions he had originally posed. In the same year as Ruescas’s book, 1546, Alonso López de Corella published his Trezientas preguntas de cosas naturales in Valladolid, a work in which 300 questions are answered with brief prose explanations.31 Just one year later, he released a revised version under the title Secretos de filosofía, astrología, medicina, y de las cuatro matemáticas ciencias, colegidos de muchos y diversos autores, divididos en cinco de quinquagenas de preguntas (1547). This new edition features expanded prose responses but is reduced to 250 questions, now organized into five parts of fifty questions each (López de Corella [1547] 2001, p. 16). Love appears in only three of the many questions, and even then, one is dropped in the final version: the one asking why excessive intercourse causes hair to turn white. In both versions, however, the question of why excessive sexual activity leads to the loss of eyebrows is discussed.

Si faltare la humedad

a do el pelo está arraigado,

caerase el pelo en verdad;

que con mucha sequedad

no puede estar apegado.

Porque seca en gran manera

el coito que es excesivo;

la pregunta que yo escribo

de soltar está ligera.

[If the moisture is lacking

where the hair is rooted,

the hair will truly fall out;

for with great dryness

it cannot remain attached.

For excessive sexual intercourse

dries exceedingly;

the question that I have written

is easily resolved.]

(López de Corella [1546] 2000, p. 180; [1547] 2001, p. 288)

The verse explanation is identical, but in 1546 the prose answer is reduced to a concise remark though it falls short of offering a real answer to the question:

Aunque el coito, como dijimos, hace caer los pelos, a las veces, si es moderado, en los de húmeda complexión hace nacer pelo. Pues habla más del coito, note el lector lo que dice Aristóteles, Problema X, cuarta parte: que los hombres aborrecen a aquellas con quienes tuvieron la primera vez cópula, y las mujeres al tal aman mucho. Los que son muy pelosos suelen ser lujuriosos, porque los tales son de caliente complexión. [Although sexual intercourse, as we have said, causes hair to fall out, at times, if it is moderate, in those of a moist complexion it makes hair grow. Since we are speaking further about intercourse, let the reader note what Aristotle says in Problemata, Book X, fourth part: that men come to abhor those women with whom they first had sexual intercourse, whereas women love such men greatly. Those who are very hairy are usually lustful, because such people are of a hot complexion.]

(López de Corella [1546] 2000, p. 180)

In the 1547 version, the answer spans several pages, although even here, the question itself is never truly answered. Rather, the author seems more concerned with portraying the sexual act as something impure, drawing on classical authorities to support his view. López de Corella invokes Galen in an attempt to explain why God would have made the carnal union so desirable, ultimately, he argues, because it serves the purpose of preserving the species.

While the first question on love in Lope de Corella’s book deals with sexuality, the second concerns romantic love and draws on Alexander of Aphrodisias (1554, ff. 153^r–154^r; 1555, ff. 32^v–33^v). Interestingly, the wording of the question differs between the two editions: in 1546, it reads “Por qué en un punto se enfría y se calienta el amante” [Why does the lover grow cold and hot in a single moment?] (López de Corella [1546] 2000, p. 256), whereas in 1547, it appears as “Por qué los amantes vienen a alterarse de ligero” [Why do lovers become agitated so easily?] (López de Corella [1547] 2001, p. 234). The answer in verse, however, is the same in both versions:

Cuando piensa el amador

en desgracias que le han dado,

cobra tristeza y temor,

métese adentro el calor

y queda el cuerpo enfriado.

Mas si piensa en los favores

que le ha dado la que ama;

sale el calor y la llama

a las partes exteriores.

[When the lover thinks

of the misfortunes that have befallen him,

he is seized by sadness and fear;

the heat withdraws inward

and the body is left cold.

But if he thinks of the favors

granted by the one he loves,

the heat and the flame

flow outward to the extremities.]

(López de Corella [1546] 2000, p. 256; [1547] 2001, p. 234)

The prose commentary in the 1546 edition makes a brief and pointed reference to the famous episode of Antiochus:

Clara está la respuesta: que tan deprisa se altere el amante, bien lo muestra la historia de Antíoco, pues por sólo nombrar el médico a la señora que amaba, y por verla delante de sí, se le alteró tanto el pulso, que el médico conoció la verdadera causa de su mal. [The answer is clear: how quickly a lover is altered is well shown by the story of Antiochus, for merely by the physician naming the lady he loved, and by her appearing before him, his pulse was so greatly altered that the physician recognized the true cause of his illness.]

(López de Corella [1546] 2000, p. 257)

In the 1547 edition, the commentary grows so elaborate that it borders on a small treatise on love. The author devotes considerable attention to the figure of the physician as a diagnostician of amorous illness. He begins with the story of Erasistratus, drawing not only on Galen’s On Prognosis (Galen 1979, p. 105), but also on non-medical accounts of the anecdote, notably those of Plutarch in the Life of Demetrius and Valerius Maximus (see Morros 1999, pp. 103–4):

Y en tanto recibe alteraciones repentinas el amante, que como en el libro De precognitione ad Posthumum dice Galeno, y más largamente Plutarco en la Vida de Demetrio, Erasístrato médico, en sólo el pulso conoció que Antioco hijo del rey Seleuco estaba enamorado de su madrastra; y el buen padre privóse de mujer por guarecer al hijo que ya por causa del amor estaba en extrema enfermedad. Este secreto dicen otros que alcanzó Leptino Matemático, como dice Valerio Máximo. [And the lover undergoes such sudden alterations that, as Galen says in his book De praecognitione ad Posthumum, and more extensively Plutarch in the Life of Demetrius, the physician Erasistratus recognized, from the pulse alone, that Antiochus, the son of King Seleucus, was in love with his stepmother. And the noble father deprived himself of his wife in order to cure his son, who by reason of love was already in an extreme state of illness. Others say that this secret was also discovered by the mathematician Leptines, as Valerius Maximus relates.]

(López de Corella [1547] 2001, p. 234)

Unlike Gordonius, López de Corella displays a thorough knowledge of Galen and juxtaposes the story of the lovesick prince with the anecdote protagonized by the physician from Pergamon himself concerning the wife of Justus (Galen 1979, pp. 101–3):

Y no con menos industria conoció Galeno, en Roma, que una romana mujer estaba fatigada del amor; porque como él cuenta en el libro De precognitione ad Posthumum, fue llamado a ver esta señora a la cual vio que no podía dormir; y que de una parte a otra por la cama desordenadamente se movía; y a lo que le preguntaban cerca las causas de su pasión no respondía. De lo cual maravillado Galeno, fuese; porque le parecía que la señora quería dormir. Y finalmente tornó otro día; y al tiempo que le tenía el pulso, entró un criado; y entre otras cosas dijo que a un gentil hombre que se llamaba Pilade había visto bailar; de lo cual tanto se alteró la señora, que se turbó en la habla, mudósele el color de la cara, alterose el pulso, de lo cual conoció Galeno que su enfermedad era estar enamorada de Pilade; de lo cual después fue más certificado. [And with no less skill Galen discovered in Rome that a Roman woman was afflicted by love; for, as he recounts in De praecognitione ad Posthumum, he was called to see this lady, whom he found unable to sleep, and moving restlessly and in a disordered fashion from one side of the bed to the other; and when she was asked about the causes of her suffering, she gave no answer. Galen marvelled at this and departed, for it seemed to him that the lady merely wished to sleep. Finally, he returned the following day, and while taking her pulse, a servant entered and mentioned, among other things, that he had seen a gentleman named Pylades dancing. At this, the lady became so agitated that her speech faltered, the colour of her face changed, and her pulse grew disturbed. From this Galen understood that her illness was caused by her being in love with Pylades, a conclusion of which he was later further assured.]

(López de Corella [1547] 2001, pp. 234–35)

It is noteworthy that López de Corella cites the Latin title De praecognitione ad Posthumum on three separate occasions. This title, however, does not correspond to the early printed tradition of the work. In Niccolò da Reggio’s medieval translation, the text circulated in the Early Modern period under the title Liber pronosticorum sive de pronosticatione, as attested in the successive Latin Opera omnia editions (Venice: Filippo Pinzi, 1490; Venice: Bernardino Benali, 1502; Pavia: Giacomo Pocatela, 1515–1516; Venice: Lucantonio Giunta, 1522; Lyon: Luxembourg de Gabiano, 1528). The title De praecognitione libellus is first attested, to the present author’s knowledge, in Leonardo Giacchino’s humanist translation, published at Lyon by Sébastien Gryphe in 1540, and is subsequently retained in Giulio Marziano Rota’s version, included in the Giuntine edition (Venice: Heirs of Lucantonio Giunta, 1541–1542).32

Alongside this engagement with the humanist Galenic tradition, López de Corella’s recourse to medieval authorities is equally noteworthy. He draws, for instance, on Avicenna’s description of lovers who, depending on external stimuli, may shift instantaneously from laughter to tears. In keeping with the Liber Canonis (1505, f. 151v), the physical signs of lovesickness are also enumerated.

Pues como dice Avicena en el lugar alegado, el amante viene a tanto término de enfermedad cuando muy de veras ama, que se enflaquece, pierde el color de la cara, los ojos se le profundan, mantiénese de suspiros, siempre anda congojoso, y como niño presto se enoja, presto se paga. [For, as Avicenna says in the passage cited, the lover reaches such an extreme state of illness when he truly loves that he grows weak, loses the colour of his face, his eyes become sunken, he sustains himself on sighs, he is always afflicted with anguish, and, like a child, he is quickly angered and consumed.]

(López de Corella [1547] 2001, p. 235)

Notably, Corella alternates between citing medical authorities such as Galen, Avicenna, and Arnau de Vilanova; the tradition of natural philosophy in problem books attributed to Aristotle and Alexander of Aphrodisias; and poetic predecessors such as Virgil, Ovid, Horace, and Propertius, thus creating a dynamic interplay between medical and natural-philosophical discourse and literary tradition.

What the foregoing analysis has attempted to show is that these so-called problem books present highly heterogeneous forms of medical and literary knowledge about love and sexuality in a way that is accessible to a broad readership. For the understanding of many Golden Age texts, engagement with this genre is both promising and indispensable, and reliably annotated critical editions remain a significant desideratum.

4. Conclusions: Physicians Writing the Symptoms of Lovesickness

The genre of the problem book popularised a wide range of learning, including medical conceptions of the symptoms of lovesickness, among a broad readership. In conclusion, it is worth noting how physician-authors playfully rework this lore, which they could now assume to be familiar to a wide audience. A revealing example is La pícara Justina, published in Medina del Campo in 1605, the first picaresque novel to feature a female protagonist, by the physician Francisco López de Úbeda.33 Love plays a prominent role in this curious novel, a fact that is likely connected to the gender and social position of its protagonist: a marginalized woman who undergoes a series of decidedly unromantic amorous encounters. In the first chapter of the second book (La pícara romera), in which Justina embarks on several pilgrimages, a grotesque suitor is introduced. He is portrayed as a corpulent tocinero, a pork butcher, with sorrowful besugo-like eyes and a blotchy face (“Unos ojos tristes y medio vueltos, que parecían de besugo cocido; una cara labrada de manchas”, López de Úbeda [1605] 2012, pp. 442–43). This burlesque physiognomy can certainly be read as an ironic allusion to the longstanding topos of the melancholic lover, described as having hollow, sorrowful eyes. A further and frequently discussed symptom of lovesickness is the sighing of lovers. The traditional explanation, which attributes groaning to air trapped within the body, is comically subverted and grotesquely reimagined in the work of López de Úbeda:

Miren qué aliño de dárseme a entender un hombre que, en vez de ardientes suspiros, despachaba por instantes rebueldos que salían de lo íntimo de la yel, que eran harto más a propósito de dar muestras de una infernal piscina, que publicar tiernos sentimientos de un corazón herido dulcemente. [Look what a fine manner there was of making himself understood to me, a man who, instead of burning sighs, discharged from time to time eructations that came out from the innermost part of the bile, which were far more apt to give signs of an infernal pool than to proclaim tender feelings of a sweetly wounded heart.]

(López de Úbeda [1605] 2012, pp. 446–47)

The man whom Justina ultimately chooses as her husband is a certain Lozano, whose appearance is not only described in great detail, but also explicitly analysed through the lens of physiognomy. The interpretation of Lozano’s bodily features, rendered in a distinctly burlesque manner, reveals the author’s ironic distance from this pseudoscience. In our context, the reference to his lack of hair is particularly noteworthy: “Era algo calvo, señal de desamorado” [He was somewhat bald, a sign of being unloving] (López de Úbeda [1605] 2012, p. 947). Within the framework of Early Modern problem literature, alopecia frequently appears as a consequence of excessive sexual activity. The novel playfully draws on this notion by portraying Justina as a poor physiognomist who fails to interpret this bodily sign correctly when choosing her husband. Her marriage to the passionate gambler Lozano collapses on the very wedding night, as he prefers playing cards to consummating the marriage. His baldness should have revealed to her that he had already excessively indulged his desires in the past.

The physiology of love, the visible symptoms of lovesickness, and the diagnosis of the disease constituted a complex field in the Early Modern period, in which ancient and medieval medical knowledge was treated by physician-authors with surprising openness, abundant humour, and considerable irony.