The Anatomy of Melancholy Part 47

Thus others object, thus I may conceive out of the weakness of my apprehension; but to say truth, there is no such fault, no such ambition, no novelty, or ostentation, as some suppose; but as [4177]one answers, this of compound medicines, "is a most n.o.ble and profitable invention found out, and brought into physic with great judgment, wisdom, counsel and discretion." Mixed diseases must have mixed remedies, and such simples are commonly mixed as have reference to the part affected, some to qualify, the rest to comfort, some one part, some another. Cardan and Bra.s.savola both hold that _Nullum simplex medicamentum sine noxa_, no simple medicine is without hurt or offence; and although Hippocrates, Erasistratus, Diocles of old, in the infancy of this art, were content with ordinary simples: yet now, saith [4178]Aetius, "necessity compelleth to seek for new remedies, and to make compounds of simples, as well to correct their harms if cold, dry, hot, thick, thin, insipid, noisome to smell, to make them savoury to the palate, pleasant to taste and take, and to preserve them for continuance, by admixtion of sugar, honey, to make them last months and years for several uses." In such cases, compound medicines may be approved, and Arnoldus in his 18. aphorism, doth allow of it. [4179]"If simples cannot, necessity compels us to use compounds;" so for receipts and magistrals, _dies diem docet_, one day teacheth another, and they are as so many words or phrases, _Que nunc sunt in honore vocabula si volet usus_, ebb and flow with the season, and as wits vary, so they may be infinitely varied. _Quisque suum placitum quo capiatur habet._ "Every man as he likes, so many men so many minds," and yet all tending to good purpose, though not the same way. As arts and sciences, so physic is still perfected amongst the rest; _Horae musarum nutrices_, and experience teacheth us every day [4180]many things which our predecessors knew not of. Nature is not effete, as he saith, or so lavish, to bestow all her gifts upon an age, but hath reserved some for posterity, to show her power, that she is still the same, and not old or consumed. Birds and beasts can cure themselves by nature, [4181]_naturae usu ea plerumque cognosc.u.n.t quae homines vix longo labore et doctrina a.s.sequuntur_, but "men must use much labour and industry to find it out." But I digress.

Compound medicines are inwardly taken, or outwardly applied. Inwardly taken, be either liquid or solid: liquid, are fluid or consisting. Fluid, as wines and syrups. The wines ordinarily used to this disease are wormwood wine, tamarisk, and buglossatum, wine made of borage and bugloss, the composition of which is specified in Arnoldus Villanova.n.u.s, _lib. de vinis_, of borage, balm, bugloss, cinnamon, &c. and highly commended for its virtues: [4182]"it drives away leprosy, scabs, clears the blood, recreates the spirits, exhilarates the mind, purgeth the brain of those anxious black melancholy fumes, and cleanseth the whole body of that black humour by urine. To which I add," saith Villanova.n.u.s, "that it will bring madmen, and such raging bedlamites as are tied in chains, to the use of their reason again. My conscience bears me witness, that I do not lie, I saw a grave matron helped by this means; she was so choleric, and so furious sometimes, that she was almost mad, and beside herself; she said, and did she knew not what, scolded, beat her maids, and was now ready to be bound till she drank of this borage wine, and by this excellent remedy was cured, which a poor foreigner, a silly beggar, taught her by chance, that came to crave an alms from door to door." The juice of borage, if it be clarified, and drunk in wine, will do as much, the roots sliced and steeped, &c. saith Ant. Mizaldus, _art. med._ who cities this story verbatim out of Villanova.n.u.s, and so doth Magninus a physician of Milan, in his regimen of health. Such another excellent compound water I find in Rubeus _de distill. sect. 3._ which he highly magnifies out of Savanarola, [4183]"for such as are solitary, dull, heavy or sad without a cause, or be troubled with trembling of heart." Other excellent compound waters for melancholy, he cites in the same place. [4184]"If their melancholy be not inflamed, or their temperature over-hot." Evonimus hath a precious _aquavitae_ to this purpose, for such as are cold. But he and most commend _aurum potabile_, and every writer prescribes clarified whey, with borage, bugloss, endive, succory, &c. of goat's milk especially, some indefinitely at all times, some thirty days together in the spring, every morning fasting, a good draught. Syrups are very good, and often used to digest this humour in the heart, spleen, liver, &c. As syrup of borage (there is a famous syrup of borage highly commended by Laurentius to this purpose in his tract of melancholy), _de pomis_ of king Sabor, now obsolete, of thyme and epithyme, hops, scolopendria, fumitory, maidenhair, bizantine, &c.

These are most used for preparatives to other physic, mixed with distilled waters of like nature, or in juleps otherwise.

Consisting, are conserves or confections; conserves of borage, bugloss, balm, fumitory, succory, maidenhair, violets, roses, wormwood, &c.

Confections, treacle, mithridate, eclegms, or linctures, &c. Solid, as aromatical confections: hot, _diambra, diamargaritum calidum, dianthus, diamoschum dulce, electuarium de gemmis laetificans Galeni et Rhasis, diagalanga, diaciminum dianisum, diatrion piperion, diazinziber, diacapers, diacinnamonum_: Cold, as _diamargaritum frigidum, diacorolli, diarrhodon abbatis, diacodion_, &c. as every _pharmacopoeia_ will show you, with their tables or losings that are made out of them: with condites and the like.

Outwardly used as occasion serves, as amulets, oils hot and cold, as of camomile, staechados, violets, roses, almonds, poppy, nymphea, mandrake, &c. to be used after bathing, or to procure sleep.

Ointments composed of the said species, oils and wax, &c., as _Alablastritum Populeum_, some hot, some cold, to moisten, procure sleep, and correct other accidents.

Liniments are made of the same matter to the like purpose: emplasters of herbs, flowers, roots, &c., with oils, and other liquors mixed and boiled together.

Cataplasms, salves, or poultices made of green herbs, pounded, or sod in water till they be soft, which are applied to the hypochondries, and other parts, when the body is empty.

Cerotes are applied to several parts and frontals, to take away pain, grief, heat, procure sleep. Fomentations or sponges, wet in some decoctions, &c., epithemata, or those moist medicines, laid on linen, to bathe and cool several parts misaffected.

Sacculi, or little bags of herbs, flowers, seeds, roots, and the like, applied to the head, heart, stomach, &c., odoraments, b.a.l.l.s, perfumes, posies to smell to, all which have their several uses in melancholy, as shall be shown, when I treat of the cure of the distinct species by themselves.

MEMB. II.

SUBSECT. I.--_Purging Simples upward_.

Melanagoga, or melancholy purging medicines, are either simple or compound, and that gently, or violently, purging upward or downward. These following purge upward. [4185]Asarum, or Asrabecca, which, as Mesue saith, is hot in the second degree, and dry in the third, "it is commonly taken in wine, whey," or as with us, the juice of two or three leaves or more sometimes, pounded in posset drink qualified with a little liquorice, or aniseed, to avoid the fulsomeness of the taste, or as _Diaserum Fernelii_. Bra.s.sivola _in Catart_. reckons it up amongst those simples that only purge melancholy, and Ruellius confirms as much out of his experience, that it purgeth [4186]black choler, like h.e.l.lebore itself. Galen, _lib. G.

simplic_. and [4187]Matthiolus ascribe other virtues to it, and will have it purge other humours as well as this.

Laurel, by Heurnius's method, _ad prax. lib. 2. cap. 24._ is put amongst the strong purgers of melancholy; it is hot and dry in the fourth degree.

Dioscorides, _lib. 11. cap. 114._ adds other effects to it. [4188]Pliny sets down fifteen berries in drink for a sufficient potion: it is commonly corrected with his opposites, cold and moist, as juice of endive, purslane, and is taken in a potion to seven grains and a half. But this and asrabecca, every gentlewoman in the country knows how to give, they are two common vomits.

Scilla, or sea-onion, is hot and dry in the third degree. Bra.s.sivola _in Catart_. out of Mesue, others, and his own experience, will have this simple to purge [4189]melancholy alone. It is an ordinary vomit, _vinum scillitic.u.m_ mixed with rubel in a little white wine.

White h.e.l.lebore, which some call sneezing-powder, a strong purger upward, which many reject, as being too violent: Mesue and Averroes will not admit of it, [4190]"by reason of danger of suffocation," [4191]"great pain and trouble it puts the poor patient to," saith Dodonaeus. Yet Galen, _lib. 6.

simpl. med._ and Dioscorides, _cap. 145._ allow of it. It was indeed [4192]

"terrible in former times," as Pliny notes, but now familiar, insomuch that many took it in those days, [4193]"that were students, to quicken their wits," which Persius _Sat. 1._ objects to Accius the poet, _Illas Acci ebria veratro_. [4194]"It helps melancholy, the falling sickness, madness, gout, &c., but not to be taken of old men, youths, such as are weaklings, nice, or effeminate, troubled with headache, high-coloured, or fear strangling," saith Dioscorides. [4195]Oribasius, an old physician, hath written very copiously, and approves of it, "in such affections which can otherwise hardly be cured." Hernius, _lib. 2. prax. med. de vomitoriis_, will not have it used [4196]"but with great caution, by reason of its strength, and then when antimony will do no good," which caused Hermophilus to compare it to a stout captain (as Codroneus observes _cap. 7. comment.

de h.e.l.leb._) that will see all his soldiers go before him and come _post principia_, like the bragging soldier, last himself; [4197]when other helps fail in inveterate melancholy, in a desperate case, this vomit is to be taken. And yet for all this, if it be well prepared, it may be [4198]

securely given at first. [4199]Matthiolus brags, that he hath often, to the good of many, made use of it, and Heurnius, [4200]"that he hath happily used it, prepared after his own prescript," and with good success.

Christophorus a Vega, _lib. 3. c. 41_, is of the same opinion, that it may be lawfully given; and our country gentlewomen find it by their common practice, that there is no such great danger in it. Dr. Turner, speaking of this plant in his Herbal, telleth us, that in his time it was an ordinary receipt among good wives, to give h.e.l.lebore in powder to ii'd weight, and he is not much against it. But they do commonly exceed, for who so bold as blind Bayard, and prescribe it by pennyworths, and such irrational ways, as I have heard myself market folks ask for it in an apothecary's shop: but with what success G.o.d knows; they smart often for their rash boldness and folly, break a vein, make their eyes ready to start out of their heads, or kill themselves. So that the fault is not in the physic, but in the rude and indiscreet handling of it. He that will know, therefore, when to use, how to prepare it aright, and in what dose, let him read Heurnius _lib. 2.

prax. med_. Bra.s.sivola _de Catart_. G.o.defridus Stegius the emperor Rudolphus' physician, _cap. 16._ Matthiolus in Dioscor. and that excellent commentary of Baptista Codroncus, which is _instar omnium de h.e.l.leb. alb._ where we shall find great diversity of examples and receipts.

Antimony or stibium, which our chemists so much magnify, is either taken in substance or infusion, &c., and frequently prescribed in this disease. "It helps all infirmities," saith [4201]Matthiolus, "which proceed from black choler, falling sickness, and hypochondriacal pa.s.sions;" and for farther proof of his a.s.sertion, he gives several instances of such as have been freed with it: [4202]one of Andrew Gallus, a physician of Trent, that after many other essays, "imputes the recovery of his health, next after G.o.d, to this remedy alone." Another of George Hands.h.i.+us, that in like sort, when other medicines failed, [4203]"was by this restored to his former health, and which of his knowledge others have likewise tried, and by the help of this admirable medicine, been recovered." A third of a parish priest at Prague in Bohemia, [4204]"that was so far gone with melancholy, that he doted, and spake he knew not what; but after he had taken twelve grains of stibium, (as I myself saw, and can witness, for I was called to see this miraculous accident) he was purged of a deal of black choler, like little gobbets of flesh, and all his excrements were as black blood (a medicine fitter for a horse than a man), yet it did him so much good, that the next day he was perfectly cured." This very story of the Bohemian priest, Sckenkius relates _verbatim, Exoter. experiment. ad. var. morb. cent. 6.

observ. 6._ with great approbation of it. Hercules de Saxonia calls it a profitable medicine, if it be taken after meat to six or eight grains, of such as are apt to vomit. Rodericus a Fonseca the Spaniard, and late professor of Padua in Italy, extols it to this disease, Tom. 2. consul. 85.

so doth Lod. Mercatus _de inter. morb. cur. lib. 1. cap. 17._ with many others. Jacobus Gervinus a French physician, on the other side, _lib. 2. de venemis confut._ explodes all this, and saith he took three grains only upon Matthiolus and some others' commendation, but it almost killed him, whereupon he concludes, [4205]"antimony is rather poison than a medicine."

Th. Erastus concurs with him in his opinion, and so doth Aelian Montaltus _cap. 30 de melan._ But what do I talk? 'tis the subject of whole books; I might cite a century of authors _pro_ and _con_. I will conclude with [4206]Zuinger, antimony is like Scanderbeg's sword, which is either good or bad, strong or weak, as the party is that prescribes, or useth it: "a worthy medicine if it be rightly applied to a strong man, otherwise poison." For the preparing of it, look in _Evonimi thesaurus_, Quercetan, Oswaldus Crollius, Basil. _Chim. Basil._ Valentius, &c.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, which goes far beyond all the panaceas, potable gold, and philosopher's stones, a sovereign remedy to all diseases. A good vomit, I confess, a virtuous herb, if it be well qualified, opportunely taken, and medicinally used; but as it is commonly abused by most men, which take it as tinkers do ale, 'tis a plague, a mischief, a violent purger of goods, lands, health, h.e.l.lish, devilish and d.a.m.ned tobacco, the ruin and overthrow of body and soul.

SUBSECT. II.--_Simples purging Melancholy downward_.

Polypody and epithyme are, without all exceptions, gentle purgers of melancholy. Dioscorides will have them void phlegm; but Bra.s.sivola out of his experience averreth, that they purge this humour; they are used in decoction, infusion, &c. simple, mixed, &c.

Mirabolanes, all five kinds, are happily [4207]prescribed against melancholy and quartan agues; Bra.s.sivola speaks out [4208]"of a thousand"

experiences, he gave them in pills, decoctions, &c., look for peculiar receipts in him.

Stoechas, fumitory, dodder, herb mercury, roots of capers, genista or broom, pennyroyal and half-boiled cabbage, I find in this catalogue of purgers of black choler, origan, featherfew, ammoniac [4209]salt, saltpetre. But these are very gentle; alyppus, dragon root, centaury, ditany, colutea, which Fuchsius _cap. 168_ and others take for senna, but most distinguish. Senna is in the middle of violent and gentle purgers downward, hot in the second degree, dry in the first. Bra.s.sivola calls it [4210]"a wonderful herb against melancholy, it scours the blood, lightens the spirits, shakes off sorrow, a most profitable medicine," as [4211]

Dodonaeus terms it, invented by the Arabians, and not heard of before. It is taken diverse ways, in powder, infusion, but most commonly in the infusion, with ginger, or some cordial flowers added to correct it.

Actuarius commends it sodden in broth, with an old c.o.c.k, or in whey, which is the common conveyor of all such things as purge black choler; or steeped in wine, which Heurnius accounts sufficient, without any farther correction.

Aloes by most is said to purge choler, but Aurelia.n.u.s _lib. 2. c. 6. de morb. chron._ Arcula.n.u.s _cap. 6. in 9. Rhasis_ Julius Alexandrinus, _consil. 185._ Scoltz. Crato _consil 189._ Scoltz. prescribe it to this disease; as good for the stomach and to open the haemorrhoids, out of Mesue, Rhasis, Serapio, Avicenna: Menardus _ep. lib. 1. epist. 1._ opposeth it, aloes [4212]"doth not open the veins," or move the haemorrhoids, which Leonhartus Fuchsius _paradox. lib. 1._ likewise affirms; but Bra.s.sivola and Dodonaeus defend Mesue out of their experience; let [4213]Valesius end the controversy.

Lapis armenus and lazuli are much magnified by [4214]Alexander _lib. 1.

cap. 16._ Avicenna, Aetius, and Actuarius, if they be well washed, that the water be no more coloured, fifty times some say. [4215]"That good Alexander" (saith Guianerus) "puts such confidence in this one medicine, that he thought all melancholy pa.s.sions might be cured by it; and I for my part have oftentimes happily used it, and was never deceived in the operation of it." The like may be said of lapis lazuli, though it be somewhat weaker than the other. Garcias ab Horto, _hist. lib. 1. cap. 65._ relates, that the [4216]physicians of the Moors familiarly prescribe it to all melancholy pa.s.sions, and Matthiolus _ep. lib. 3._ [4217]brags of that happy success which he still had in the administration of it. Nicholas Meripsa puts it amongst the best remedies, _sect. 1. cap. 12._ in Antidotis; [4218]"and if this will not serve" (saith Rhasis) "then there remains nothing but lapis armenus and h.e.l.lebore itself." Valescus and Jason Pratensis much commend pulvis hali, which is made of it. James Damascen.

_2. cap. 12._ Hercules de Saxonia, &c., speaks well of it. Crato will not approve this; it and both h.e.l.lebores, he saith, are no better than poison.

Victor Trincavelius, _lib. 2. cap. 14_, found it in his experience, [4219]"to be very noisome, to trouble the stomach, and hurt their bodies that take it overmuch."

Black h.e.l.lebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired, was first found out by Melanpodius a shepherd, as Pliny records, _lib. 25. cap. 5._ [4220]who, seeing it to purge his goats when they raved, practised it upon Elige and Calene, King Praetus' daughters, that ruled in Arcadia, near the fountain c.l.i.torius, and restored them to their former health. In Hippocrates's time it was in only request, insomuch that he writ a book of it, a fragment of which remains yet. Theophrastus, [4221]Galen, Pliny, Caelius Aurelia.n.u.s, as ancient as Galen, _lib. 1, cap. 6._ Aretus _lib. 1. cap. 5._ Oribasius _lib. 7. collect._ a famous Greek, Aetius _ser. 3. cap. 112 & 113 p._ Aegineta, Galen's Ape, _lib. 7. cap. 4._ Actuarius, Trallia.n.u.s _lib. 5.

cap. 15._ Cornelius Celsus only remaining of the old Latins, _lib. 3. cap.

23_, extol and admire this excellent plant; and it was generally so much esteemed of the ancients for this disease amongst the rest, that they sent all such as were crazed, or that doted, to the Anticyrae, or to Phocis in Achaia, to be purged, where this plant was in abundance to be had. In Strabo's time it was an ordinary voyage, _Naviget Anticyras_; a common proverb among the Greeks and Latins, to bid a dizzard or a mad man go take h.e.l.lebore; as in Lucian, Menippus to Tantalus, _Tantale desipis, h.e.l.leboro epoto tibi opus est, eoque sane meraco_, thou art out of thy little wit, O Tantalus, and must needs drink h.e.l.lebore, and that without mixture.

Aristophanes _in Vespis_, drink h.e.l.lebore, &c. and Harpax in the [4222]

Comoedian, told Simo and Ballio, two doting fellows, that they had need to be purged with this plant. When that proud Menacrates [Greek: o zeus], had writ an arrogant letter to Philip of Macedon, he sent back no other answer but this, _Consulo tibi ut ad Anticyram te conferas_, noting thereby that he was crazed, _atque ellebore indigere_, had much need of a good purge.

Lilius Geraldus saith, that Hercules, after all his mad pranks upon his wife and children, was perfectly cured by a purge of h.e.l.lebore, which an Anticyrian administered unto him. They that were sound commonly took it to quicken their wits, (as Ennis of old, [4223]_Qui non nisi potus ad arma--prosiluit dicenda_, and as our poets drink sack to improve their inventions (I find it so registered by Agellius _lib. 17. cap. 15._) Cameades the academic, when he was to write against Zeno the stoic, purged himself with h.e.l.lebore first, which [4224]Petronius puts upon Chrysippus.

In such esteem it continued for many ages, till at length Mesue and some other Arabians began to reject and reprehend it, upon whose authority for many following l.u.s.tres, it was much debased and quite out of request, held to be poison and no medicine; and is still oppugned to this day by [4225]

Crato and some junior physicians. Their reasons are, because Aristotle _l.

1. de plant. c. 3._ said, henbane and h.e.l.lebore were poison; and Alexander Aphrodiseus, in the preface of his problems, gave out, that (speaking of h.e.l.lebore) [4226]"Quails fed on that which was poison to men." Galen. _l.

6. Epid. com. 5. Text. 35._ confirms as much: [4227]Constantine the emperor in his Geoponicks, attributes no other virtue to it, than to kill mice and rats, flies and mouldwarps, and so Mizaldus, Nicander of old, Gervinus, Sckenkius, and some other Neoterics that have written of poisons, speak of h.e.l.lebore in a chief place. [4228]Nicholas Leonicus hath a story of Solon, that besieging, I know not what city, steeped h.e.l.lebore in a spring of water, which by pipes was conveyed into the middle of the town, and so either poisoned, or else made them so feeble and weak by purging, that they were not able to bear arms. Notwithstanding all these cavils and objections, most of our late writers do much approve of it. [4229]

Gariopontus _lib. 1. cap. 13._ Codronchus _com. de h.e.l.leb._ Fallopius _lib.

de med. purg. simpl. cap. 69. et consil. 15._ Trincavelii, Monta.n.u.s 239.

Frisemelica _consil. 14._ Hercules de Saxonia, so that it be opportunely given. Jacobus de Dondis, Agg. Amatus, Lucet. _cent. 66._ G.o.def. Stegius _cap. 13._ Hollerius, and all our herbalists subscribe. Fernelius _meth.

med. lib. 5. cap. 16._ "confesseth it to be a [4230] terrible purge and hard to take, yet well given to strong men, and such as have able bodies."

P. Forestus and Capivaccius forbid it to be taken in substance, but allow it in decoction or infusion, both which ways P. Monavius approves above all others, _Epist. 231. Scoltzii_, Jacchinus in _9. Rhasis_, commends a receipt of his own preparing; Penottus another of his chemically prepared, Evonimus another. Hildesheim _spicel. 2. de mel._ hath many examples how it should be used, with diversity of receipts. Heurnius _lib. 7. prax. med.

cap. 14._ "calls it an [4231]innocent medicine howsoever, if it be well prepared." The root of it is only in use, which may be kept many years, and by some given in substance, as by Fallopius and Bra.s.sivola amongst the rest, who [4232]brags that he was the first that restored it again to its use, and tells a story how he cured one Melatasta, a madman, that was thought to be possessed, in the Duke of Ferrara's court, with one purge of black h.e.l.lebore in substance: the receipt is there to be seen; his excrements were like ink, [4233]he perfectly healed at once; Vidus Vidius, a Dutch physician, will not admit of it in substance, to whom most subscribe, but as before, in the decoction, infusion, or which is all in all, in the extract, which he prefers before the rest, and calls _suave medicamentum_, a sweet medicine, an easy, that may be securely given to women, children, and weaklings. Baracellus, _horto geniali_, terms it _maximae praestantia medicamentum_, a medicine of great worth and note.

Quercetan in his _Spagir Phar_. and many others, tell wonders of the extract. Paracelsus, above all the rest, is the greatest admirer of this plant; and especially the extract, he calls it _Theriac.u.m, terrestre Balsamum_, another treacle, a terrestrial balm, _instar omnium_, "all in all, the [4234]sole and last refuge to cure this malady, the gout, epilepsy, leprosy," &c. If this will not help, no physic in the world can but mineral, it is the upshot of all. Matthiolus laughs at those that except against it, and though some abhor it out of the authority of Mesue, and dare not adventure to prescribe it, [4235]"yet I" (saith he) "have happily used it six hundred times without offence, and communicated it to divers worthy physicians, who have given me great thanks for it." Look for receipts, dose, preparation, and other cautions concerning this simple, in him, Bra.s.sivola, Baracelsus, Codronchus, and the rest.

SUBSECT. III.--_Compound Purgers_.

Compound medicines which purge melancholy, are either taken in the superior or inferior parts: superior at mouth or nostrils. At the mouth swallowed or not swallowed: If swallowed liquid or solid: liquid, as compound wine of h.e.l.lebore, scilla or sea-onion, senna, _Vinum Scillitic.u.m, h.e.l.leboratum_, which [4236]Quercetan so much applauds "for melancholy and madness, either inwardly taken, or outwardly applied to the head, with little pieces of linen dipped warm in it." _Oxymel. Scillitic.u.m, Syrupus h.e.l.leboratus_ major and minor in Quercetan, and _Syrupus Genistae_ for hypochondriacal melancholy in the same author, compound syrup of succory, of fumitory, polypody, &c. Heurnius his purging c.o.c.k-broth. Some except against these syrups, as appears by [4237]Udalrinus Leonoras his epistle to Matthiolus, as most pernicious, and that out of Hippocrates, _cocta movere, et medicari, non cruda_, no raw things to be used in physic; but this in the following epistle is exploded and soundly confuted by Matthiolus: many juleps, potions, receipts, are composed of these, as you shall find in Hildesheim _spicel. 2._ Heurnius _lib. 2. cap. 14._ George Sckenkius _Ital.

med. prax._ &c.

Solid purges are confections, electuaries, pills by themselves, or compound with others, as _de lapide lazulo, armeno, pil. indae, of fumitory_, &c.

Confection of Hamech, which though most approve, Solenander _sec. 5.

consil. 22._ bitterly inveighs against, so doth Rondoletius _Pharmacop.

officina_, Fernelius and others; diasena, diapolypodium, diaca.s.sia, diacatholicon, Wecker's electuary de Epithymo, Ptolemy's hierologadium, of which divers receipts are daily made.

Aetius _22. 23._ commends _Hieram Ruffi._ Trincavelius _consil. 12. lib.

4._ approves of hiera; _non, inquit, invenio melius medicamentum_, I find no better medicine, he saith. Heurnius adds _pil. aggregat. pills de Epithymo. pil. Ind._ Mesue describes in the _Florentine Antidotary_, _Pilulae sine quibus esse nolo, Pilulae, Cochics, c.u.m h.e.l.leboro, Pil.

Arabicae, Faetida, de quinque generibus mirabolanorum_, &c. More proper to melancholy, not excluding in the meantime, turbith, manna, rhubarb, agaric, elescophe, &c. which are not so proper to this humour. For, as Montaltus holds _cap. 30._ and Monta.n.u.s _cholera etiam purganda, quod atrae, sit pabulum_, choler is to be purged because it feeds the other: and some are of an opinion, as Erasistratus and Asclepiades maintained of old, against whom Galen disputes, [4238]"that no physic doth purge one humour alone, but all alike or what is next." Most therefore in their receipts and magistrals which are coined here, make a mixture of several simples and compounds to purge all humours in general as well as this. Some rather use potions than pills to purge this humour, because that as Heurnius and Crato observe, _hic succus a sicco remedio agre trahitur_, this juice is not so easily drawn by dry remedies, and as Monta.n.u.s adviseth _25 cons._ "All [4239]drying medicines are to be repelled, as aloe, hiera," and all pills whatsoever, because the disease is dry of itself.