melancholia

A disease of the brain which, in its simple form, is characterized by deep depression, by inconsolable sorrow, by weary grief, and yet withal by no impairment of the intellectual powers. See Browne, Med. Jurisprudence of Insanity, section 266. That form of melancholia which creates a prevailing propensity to suicide, consists in the unfounded and morbid fancies of the sufferer regarding his means of subsistence or his position in life, or in distorted conceptions of his relations to society or his family, of his rights or duties, or of dangers threatening his person, property or reputation. When fully developed, the hallucination becomes the sole object of attention; the evil seems overwhelming and hopeless. See Connecticut Mutual Life Ins. Co. v Green, 86 Pa 92.