The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.

The Anatomy of Melancholy eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 2,057 pages of information about The Anatomy of Melancholy.

This material melancholy is either simple or mixed; offending in quantity or quality, varying according to his place, where it settleth, as brain, spleen, mesaraic veins, heart, womb, and stomach; or differing according to the mixture of those natural humours amongst themselves, or four unnatural adust humours, as they are diversely tempered and mingled.  If natural melancholy abound in the body, which is cold and dry, “so that it be more [1063]than the body is well able to bear, it must needs be distempered,” saith Faventius, “and diseased;” and so the other, if it be depraved, whether it arise from that other melancholy of choler adust, or from blood, produceth the like effects, and is, as Montaltus contends, if it come by adustion of humours, most part hot and dry.  Some difference I find, whether this melancholy matter may be engendered of all four humours, about the colour and temper of it.  Galen holds it may be engendered of three alone, excluding phlegm, or pituita, whose true assertion [1064]Valesius and Menardus stiffly maintain, and so doth [1065]Fuschius, Montaltus, [1066] Montanus.  How (say they) can white become black?  But Hercules de Saxonia, lib. post. de mela. c. 8, and [1067]Cardan are of the opposite part (it may be engendered of phlegm, etsi raro contingat, though it seldom come to pass), so is [1068]Guianerius and Laurentius, c. 1. with Melanct. in his book de Anima, and Chap. of Humours; he calls it asininam, dull, swinish melancholy, and saith that he was an eyewitness of it:  so is [1069]Wecker.  From melancholy adust ariseth one kind; from choler another, which is most brutish; another from phlegm, which is dull; and the last from blood, which is best.  Of these some are cold and dry, others hot and dry, [1070]varying according to their mixtures, as they are intended, and remitted.  And indeed as Rodericus a Fons. cons. 12. l. 1. determines, ichors, and those serous matters being thickened become phlegm, and phlegm degenerates into choler, choler adust becomes aeruginosa melancholia, as vinegar out of purest wine putrified or by exhalation of purer spirits is so made, and becomes sour and sharp; and from the sharpness of this humour proceeds much waking, troublesome thoughts and dreams, &c. so that I conclude as before.  If the humour be cold, it is, saith [1071]Faventinus, “a cause of dotage, and produceth milder symptoms:  if hot, they are rash, raving mad, or inclining to it.”  If the brain be hot, the animal spirits are hot; much madness follows, with violent actions:  if cold, fatuity and sottishness, [1072]Capivaccius. [1073]"The colour of this mixture varies likewise according to the mixture, be it hot or cold; ’tis sometimes black, sometimes not,” Altomarus.  The same [1074]Melanelius proves out of Galen; and Hippocrates in his Book of Melancholy (if at least it be his), giving instance in a burning coal, “which when it is hot, shines; when it is cold, looks black;

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The Anatomy of Melancholy from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.