is hindered, often belching, &c.  And from these crudities, windy vapours ascend up to the brain which trouble the imagination, and cause fear, sorrow, dullness, heaviness, many terrible conceits and chimeras, as Lemnius well observes, l. 1. c. 16. “as [2640]a black and thick cloud covers the sun, and intercepts his beams and light, so doth this melancholy vapour obnubilate the mind, enforce it to many absurd thoughts and imaginations,” and compel good, wise, honest, discreet men (arising to the brain from the [2641] lower parts, “as smoke out of a chimney”) to dote, speak, and do that which becomes them not, their persons, callings, wisdoms.  One by reason of those ascending vapours and gripings, rumbling beneath, will not be persuaded but that he hath a serpent in his guts, a viper, another frogs.  Trallianus relates a story of a woman, that imagined she had swallowed an eel, or a serpent, and Felix Platerus, observat. lib. 1. hath a most memorable example of a countryman of his, that by chance, falling into a pit where frogs and frogs’ spawn was, and a little of that water swallowed, began to suspect that he had likewise swallowed frogs’ spawn, and with that conceit and fear, his phantasy wrought so far, that he verily thought he had young live frogs in his belly, qui vivebant ex alimento suo, that lived by his nourishment, and was so certainly persuaded of it, that for many years afterwards he could not be rectified in his conceit:  He studied physic seven years together to cure himself, travelled into Italy, France and Germany to confer with the best physicians about it, and A.D. 1609, asked his counsel amongst the rest; he told him it was wind, his conceit, &c., but mordicus contradicere, et ore, et scriptis probare nitebatur:  no saying would serve, it was no wind, but real frogs:  “and do you not hear them croak?” Platerus would have deceived him, by putting live frog’s into his excrements; but he, being a physician himself, would not be deceived, vir prudens alias, et doctus a wise and learned man otherwise, a doctor of physic, and after seven years’ dotage in this kind, a phantasia liberatus est, he was cured.  Laurentius and Goulart have many such examples, if you be desirous to read them.  One commodity above the rest which are melancholy, these windy flatuous have, lucidia intervalla, their symptoms and pains are not usually so continuate as the rest, but come by fits, fear and sorrow, and the rest:  yet in another they exceed all others; and that is, [2642]they are luxurious, incontinent, and prone to venery, by reason of wind, et facile amant, et quamlibet fere amant.  (Jason Pratensis) [2643]Rhasis is of opinion, that Venus doth many of them much good; the other symptoms of the mind be common with the rest.

SUBSECT.  III.—­Symptoms of Melancholy abounding in the whole body.