ABSTRACT
Writings on the health consequences of bereavement can be traced back across many centuries, with fascinating contributions as long ago as the seventeenth century. One widely read and highly influential book, first published in 1621, was Robert Burton’s The anatomy of melancholy (republished in 1977). Burton drew the conclusion that grief can have negative effects on those smitten with it. He cited cases such as the suicide of Aegeus, who drowned himself, “impatient of sorrow for his son’s death” (p. 360). Another landmark was the publication of probably the first systematic examination of differential mortality rates across marital statuses by William Farr (1858), who reported excesses in deaths among widowed persons and went on to comment: if “unmarried people suffer from disease in undue proportion the have been married [by whom he meant the widowed] suffer still more” (p. 440).
