the following species, as some will have it. [894]Laurentius and [895]
Altomarus comprehended madness, melancholy, and the rest under this
name, and call it the summum genus of them all. If it be distinguished
from them, it is natural or ingenite, which comes by some defect of the
organs, and overmuch brain, as we see in our common fools; and is for
the most part intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon
some are wiser than others: or else it is acquisite, an appendix or
symptom of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continue,
a sign of melancholy itself.
_Frenzy_.] _Phrenitis_, which the Greeks derive from the word φρην, is
a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage, which hath
an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or the
membranes or kells of it, with an acute fever, which causeth madness
and dotage. It differs from melancholy and madness, because their
dotage is without an ague: this continual, with waking, or memory
decayed, &c. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous; and many
such like differences are assigned by physicians.
_Madness_.] Madness, frenzy, and melancholy are confounded by Celsus,
and many writers; others leave out frenzy, and make madness and
melancholy but one disease, which [896]Jason Pratensis especially
labours, and that they differ only secundam majus or minus, in quantity
alone, the one being a degree to the other, and both proceeding from
one cause. They differ intenso et remisso gradu, saith [897]Gordonius,
as the humour is intended or remitted. Of the same mind is
[898]Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus, Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius;
and Galen himself writes promiscuously of them both by reason of their
affinity: but most of our neoterics do handle them apart, whom I will
follow in this treatise. Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement
dotage; or raving without a fever, far more violent than melancholy,
full of anger and clamour, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling
the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and mind, without
all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness, that
sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this
from frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is most part
better. It hath the same causes as the other, as choler adust, and
blood incensed, brains inflamed, &c. [899]Fracastorius adds, a due
time, and full age to this definition, to distinguish it from children,
and will have it confirmed impotency, to separate it from such as
accidentally come and go again, as by taking henbane, nightshade, wine,
&c. Of this fury there be divers kinds; [900]ecstasy, which is familiar
with some persons, as Cardan saith of himself, he could be in one when
he list; in which the Indian priests deliver their oracles, and the
witches in Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writeth, l. 3, cap. 18. Extasi
omnia praedicere, answer all questions in an ecstasis you will ask;
what your friends do, where they are, how they fare, &c. The other
species of this fury are enthusiasms, revelations, and visions, so
often mentioned by Gregory and Bede in their works; obsession or
possession of devils, sibylline prophets, and poetical furies; such as
come by eating noxious herbs, tarantulas stinging, &c., which some
reduce to this. The most known are these, lycanthropia, hydrophobia,
chorus sancti Viti.
_Lycanthropia_.] Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others
lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves
and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are
wolves, or some such beasts. [901]Aetius and [902]Paulus call it a kind
of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do.
Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. [903]Donat
ab Altomari saith, that he saw two of them in his time: [904]Wierus
tells a story of such a one at Padua 1541, that would not believe to
the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a
Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; [905]Forrestus confirms as much
by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness,
at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about
graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful
look. Such belike, or little better, were king Praetus' [906]daughters,
that thought themselves kine. And Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, as some
interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness. This
disease perhaps gave occasion to that bold assertion of [907]Pliny,
some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men
again: and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a
wolf, and afterwards turned to his former shape: to [908]Ovid's tale of
Lycaon, &c. He that is desirous to hear of this disease, or more
examples, let him read Austin in his 18th book de Civitate Dei, cap. 5.
Mizaldus, cent. 5. 77. Sckenkius, lib. 1. Hildesheim, spicel. 2. de
Mania. Forrestus lib. 10. de morbis cerebri. Olaus Magnus, Vincentius
Bellavicensis, spec. met. lib. 31. c. 122. Pierius, Bodine, Zuinger,
Zeilger, Peucer, Wierus, Spranger, &c. This malady, saith Avicenna,
troubleth men most in February, and is nowadays frequent in Bohemia and
Hungary, according to [909]Heurnius. Scheretzius will have it common in
Livonia. They lie hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night,
barking, howling, at graves and deserts; [910]they have usually hollow
eyes, scabbed legs and thighs, very dry and pale, [911]saith Altomarus;
he gives a reason there of all the symptoms, and sets down a brief cure
of them.
_Hydrophobia_ is a kind of madness, well known in every village, which
comes by the biting of a mad dog, or scratching, saith [912]Aurelianus;
touching, or smelling alone sometimes as [913]Sckenkius proves, and is
incident to many other creatures as well as men: so called because the
parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor,
supposing still they see a mad dog in it. And which is more wonderful;
though they be very dry, (as in this malady they are) they will rather
die than drink: [914]de Venenis Caelius Aurelianus, an ancient writer,
makes a doubt whether this Hydrophobia be a passion of the body or the
mind. The part affected is the brain: the cause, poison that comes from
the mad dog, which is so hot and dry, that it consumes all the moisture
in the body. [915] Hildesheim relates of some that died so mad; and
being cut up, had no water, scarce blood, or any moisture left in them.
To such as are so affected, the fear of water begins at fourteen days
after they are bitten, to some again not till forty or sixty days
after: commonly saith Heurnius, they begin to rave, fly water and
glasses, to look red, and swell in the face, about twenty days after
(if some remedy be not taken in the meantime) to lie awake, to be
pensive, sad, to see strange visions, to bark and howl, to fall into a
swoon, and oftentimes fits of the falling sickness. [916] Some say,
little things like whelps will be seen in their urine. If any of these
signs appear, they are past recovery. Many times these symptoms will
not appear till six or seven months after, saith [917]Codronchus; and
sometimes not till seven or eight years, as Guianerius; twelve as
Albertus; six or eight months after, as Galen holds. Baldus the great
lawyer died of it: an Augustine friar, and a woman in Delft, that were
[918]Forrestus' patients, were miserably consumed with it. The common
cure in the country (for such at least as dwell near the seaside) is to
duck them over head and ears in sea water; some use charms: every good
wife can prescribe medicines. But the best cure to be had in such
cases, is from the most approved physicians; they that will read of
them, may consult with Dioscorides, lib. 6. c. 37, Heurnius,
Hildesheim, Capivaccius, Forrestus, Sckenkius and before all others
Codronchus an Italian, who hath lately written two exquisite books on
the subject.
Chorus sancti Viti, or St. Vitus's dance; the lascivious dance, [919]
Paracelsus calls it, because they that are taken from it, can do
nothing but dance till they be dead, or cured. It is so called, for
that the parties so troubled were wont to go to St. Vitus for help, and
after they had danced there awhile, they were [920]certainly freed.
'Tis strange to hear how long they will dance, and in what manner, over
stools, forms, tables; even great bellied women sometimes (and yet
never hurt their children) will dance so long that they can stir
neither hand nor foot, but seem to be quite dead. One in red clothes
they cannot abide. Music above all things they love, and therefore
magistrates in Germany will hire musicians to play to them, and some
lusty sturdy companions to dance with them. This disease hath been very
common in Germany, as appears by those relations of [921]Sckenkius, and
Paracelsus in his book of Madness, who brags how many several persons
he hath cured of it. Felix Plateras de mentis alienat. cap. 3, reports
of a woman in Basil whom he saw, that danced a whole month together.
The Arabians call it a kind of palsy. Bodine in his 5th book de Repub.
cap. 1, speaks of this infirmity; Monavius in his last epistle to
Scoltizius, and in another to Dudithus, where you may read more of it.
The last kind of madness or melancholy, is that demoniacal (if I may so
call it) obsession or possession of devils, which Platerus and others
would have to be preternatural: stupend things are said of them, their
actions, gestures, contortions, fasting, prophesying, speaking
languages they were never taught, &c. Many strange stories are related
of them, which because some will not allow, (for Deacon and Darrel have
written large volumes on this subject pro and con.) I voluntarily omit.
[922]Fuschius, Institut. lib. 3. sec. 1. cap. 11, Felix Plater,
[923]Laurentius, add to these another fury that proceeds from love, and
another from study, another divine or religious fury; but these more
properly belong to melancholy; of all which I will speak [924]apart,
intending to write a whole book of them.
SUBSECT. V.—_Melancholy in Disposition, improperly so called,
Equivocations_.
Melancholy, the subject of our present discourse, is either in
disposition or habit. In disposition, is that transitory melancholy
which goes and comes upon every small occasion of sorrow, need,
sickness, trouble, fear, grief, passion, or perturbation of the mind,
any manner of care, discontent, or thought, which causeth anguish,
dullness, heaviness and vexation of spirit, any ways opposite to
pleasure, mirth, joy, delight, causing frowardness in us, or a dislike.
In which equivocal and improper sense, we call him melancholy that is
dull, sad, sour, lumpish, ill disposed, solitary, any way moved, or
displeased. And from these melancholy dispositions, [925]no man living
is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so
generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself; so well
composed, but more or less, some time or other he feels the smart of
it. Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality. [926]Man
that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble.
Zeno, Cato, Socrates himself, whom [927]Aelian so highly commends for a
moderate temper, that nothing could disturb him, but going out, and
coming in, still Socrates kept the same serenity of countenance, what
misery soever befell him, (if we may believe Plato his disciple) was
much tormented with it. Q. Metellus, in whom [928]Valerius gives
instance of all happiness, the most fortunate man then living, born in
that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of
person, well qualified, healthful, rich, honourable, a senator, a
consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children, &c. yet this man was
not void of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow. [929]Polycrates
Samius, that flung his ring into the sea, because he would participate
of discontent with others, and had it miraculously restored to him
again shortly after, by a fish taken as he angled, was not free from
melancholy dispositions. No man can cure himself; the very gods had
bitter pangs, and frequent passions, as their own [930]poets put upon
them. In general, [931]as the heaven, so is our life, sometimes fair,
sometimes overcast, tempestuous, and serene; as in a rose, flowers and
prickles; in the year itself, a temperate summer sometimes, a hard
winter, a drought, and then again pleasant showers: so is our life
intermixed with joys, hopes, fears, sorrows, calumnies: Invicem cedunt
dolor et voluptas, there is a succession of pleasure and pain.
[932]———medio de fonte leporum
Surgit amari aliquid, in ipsis floribus angat.
Even in the midst of laughing there is sorrow, (as [933]Solomon holds):
even in the midst of all our feasting and jollity, as [934]Austin
infers in his Com. on the 41st Psalm, there is grief and discontent.
Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos strangulat, for a pint of honey
thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a
pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak,
these miseries encompass our life. And it is most absurd and ridiculous
for any mortal man to look for a perpetual tenure of happiness in his
life. Nothing so prosperous and pleasant, but it hath [935]some
bitterness in it, some complaining, some grudging; it is all
γλυκύπικρον, a mixed passion, and like a chequer table black and white:
men, families, cities, have their falls and wanes; now trines,
sextiles, then quartiles and oppositions. We are not here as those
angels, celestial powers and bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course
without all offence, with such constancy, to continue for so many ages:
but subject to infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tumbled
up and down, carried about with every small blast, often molested and
disquieted upon each slender occasion, [936]uncertain, brittle, and so
is all that we trust unto. [937] And he that knows not this is not
armed to endure it, is not fit to live in this world (as one condoles
our time), he knows not the condition of it, where with a reciprocalty,
pleasure and pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring.
Exi e mundo, get thee gone hence if thou canst not brook it; there is
no way to avoid it, but to arm thyself with patience, with magnanimity,
to [938]oppose thyself unto it, to suffer affliction as a good soldier
of Christ; as [939]Paul adviseth constantly to bear it. But forasmuch
as so few can embrace this good council of his, or use it aright, but
rather as so many brute beasts give away to their passion, voluntary
subject and precipitate themselves into a labyrinth of cares, woes,
miseries, and suffer their souls to be overcome by them, cannot arm
themselves with that patience as they ought to do, it falleth out
oftentimes that these dispositions become habits, and many affects
contemned (as [940]Seneca notes) make a disease. Even as one
distillation, not yet grown to custom, makes a cough; but continual and
inveterate causeth a consumption of the lungs; so do these our
melancholy provocations: and according as the humour itself is
intended, or remitted in men, as their temperature of body, or rational
soul is better able to make resistance; so are they more or less
affected. For that which is but a flea-biting to one, causeth
insufferable torment to another; and which one by his singular
moderation, and well-composed carriage can happily overcome, a second
is no whit able to sustain, but upon every small occasion of
misconceived abuse, injury, grief, disgrace, loss, cross, humour, &c.
(if solitary, or idle) yields so far to passion, that his complexion is
altered, his digestion hindered, his sleep gone, his spirits obscured,
and his heart heavy, his hypochondries misaffected; wind, crudity, on a
sudden overtake him, and he himself overcome with melancholy. As it is
with a man imprisoned for debt, if once in the gaol, every creditor
will bring his action against him, and there likely hold him. If any
discontent seize upon a patient, in an instant all other perturbations
(for—qua data porta ruunt) will set upon him, and then like a lame dog
or broken-winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last
to that ill habit or malady of melancholy itself. So that as the
philosophers make [941]eight degrees of heat and cold, we may make
eighty-eight of melancholy, as the parts affected are diversely seized
with it, or have been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or
waded deeper into it. But all these melancholy fits, howsoever pleasing
at first, or displeasing, violent and tyrannizing over those whom they
seize on for the time; yet these fits I say, or men affected, are but
improperly so called, because they continue not, but come and go, as by
some objects they aye moved. This melancholy of which we are to treat,
is a habit, mosbus sonticus, or chronicus, a chronic or continuate
disease, a settled humour, as [942] Aurelianus and [943]others call it,
not errant, but fixed; and as it was long increasing, so now being
(pleasant, or painful) grown to an habit, it will hardly be removed.
SECT. I. MEMB. II.
SUBSECT. I.—_Digression of Anatomy_.
Before I proceed to define the disease of melancholy, what it is, or to
discourse farther of it, I hold it not impertinent to make a brief
digression of the anatomy of the body and faculties of the soul, for
the better understanding of that which is to follow; because many hard
words will often occur, as mirach, hypocondries, emerods, &c.,
imagination, reason, humours, spirits, vital, natural, animal, nerves,
veins, arteries, chylus, pituita; which by the vulgar will not so
easily be perceived, what they are, how cited, and to what end they
serve. And besides, it may peradventure give occasion to some men to
examine more accurately, search further into this most excellent
subject, and thereupon with that royal [944]prophet to praise God, (for
a man is fearfully and wonderfully made, and curiously wrought) that
have time and leisure enough, and are sufficiently informed in all
other worldly businesses, as to make a good bargain, buy and sell, to
keep and make choice of a fair hawk, hound, horse, &c. But for such
matters as concern the knowledge of themselves, they are wholly
ignorant and careless; they know not what this body and soul are, how
combined, of what parts and faculties they consist, or how a man
differs from a dog. And what can be more ignominious and filthy (as
[945]Melancthon well inveighs) than for a man not to know the structure
and composition of his own body, especially since the knowledge of it
tends so much to the preservation, of his health, and information of
his manners? To stir them up therefore to this study, to peruse those
elaborate works of [946]Galen, Bauhines, Plater, Vesalius, Falopius,
Laurentius, Remelinus, &c., which have written copiously in Latin; or
that which some of our industrious countrymen have done in our mother
tongue, not long since, as that translation of [947]Columbus and [948]
Microcosmographia, in thirteen books, I have made this brief
digression. Also because [949]Wecker, [950]Melancthon, [951]Fernelius,
[952] Fuschius, and those tedious Tracts de Anima (which have more
compendiously handled and written of this matter,) are not at all times
ready to be had, to give them some small taste, or notice of the rest,
let this epitome suffice.
SUBSECT. II.—_Division of the Body, Humours, Spirits_.
Of the parts of the body there may be many divisions: the most approved
is that of [953]Laurentius, out of Hippocrates: which is, into parts
contained, or containing. Contained, are either humours or spirits.
_Humours_.] A humour is a liquid or fluent part of the body,
comprehended in it, for the preservation of it; and is either innate or
born with us, or adventitious and acquisite. The radical or innate, is
daily supplied by nourishment, which some call cambium, and make those
secondary humours of ros and gluten to maintain it: or acquisite, to
maintain these four first primary humours, coming and proceeding from
the first concoction in the liver, by which means chylus is excluded.
Some divide them into profitable and excrementitious. But [954]Crato
out of Hippocrates will have all four to be juice, and not excrements,
without which no living creature can be sustained: which four, though
they be comprehended in the mass of blood, yet they have their several
affections, by which they are distinguished from one another, and from
those adventitious, peccant, or [955]diseased humours, as Melancthon
calls them.
_Blood_.] Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humour, prepared in the
mesaraic veins, and made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in
the liver, whose office is to nourish the whole body, to give it
strength and colour, being dispersed by the veins through every part of
it. And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart, which
afterwards by the arteries are communicated to the other parts.
Pituita, or phlegm, is a cold and moist humour, begotten of the colder
part of the chylus (or white juice coming out of the meat digested in
the stomach,) in the liver; his office is to nourish and moisten the
members of the body, which as the tongue are moved, that they be not
over dry.
Choler, is hot and dry, bitter, begotten of the hotter parts of the
chylus, and gathered to the gall: it helps the natural heat and senses,
and serves to the expelling of excrements.
_Melancholy_.] Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour,
begotten of the more feculent part of nourishment, and purged from the
spleen, is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler,
preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones. These four
humours have some analogy with the four elements, and to the four ages
in man.
_Serum, Sweat, Tears_.] To these humours you may add serum, which is
the matter of urine, and those excrementitious humours of the third
concoction, sweat and tears.
_Spirits_.] Spirit is a most subtle vapour, which is expressed from the
blood, and the instrument of the soul, to perform all his actions; a
common tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have
it; or as [956]Paracelsus, a fourth soul of itself. Melancthon holds
the fountain of those spirits to be the heart, begotten there; and
afterward conveyed to the brain, they take another nature to them. Of
these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principal
parts, brain, heart, liver; natural, vital, animal. The natural are
begotten in the liver, and thence dispersed through the veins, to
perform those natural actions. The vital spirits are made in the heart
of the natural, which by the arteries are transported to all the other
parts: if the spirits cease, then life ceaseth, as in a syncope or
swooning. The animal spirits formed of the vital, brought up to the
brain, and diffused by the nerves, to the subordinate members, give
sense and motion to them all.
SUBSECT. III.—_Similar Parts_.