Subsect. 5. Bad Air a cause of Melancholy.

Air is a cause of great moment, in producing this, or any other Disease, being that it is still taken into our bodies by respiration, and our more inner parts. If it be impure and foggy, it dejects the spirits, and causeth Diseases by infection of the heart, as Paulus hath it, Lib. 1. c. 49. Avicenna, lib. 1. Gal. de san. tuenda. Mercurialis, Montaltus, &c.

Fernelius saith, A thick air thickneth the blood and humors. Lemnius reckons up two main things most profitable, and most pernitious to our bodies; Air, and Diet: And this peculiar Disease, nothing sooner causeth (Jobertus holds) then the air wherein we breathe and live. Such as is the air, such be our spirits; and as our spirits, such are our humors. It offends commonly if it be too hot and dry, thick, fuliginous, cloudy, blustering, or a tempestuous air.

Bodine in his fifth Book, De repub. cap. 1, 5. of his Method of History, proves that hot Countries are most troubled with Melancholy, and that there are therefore in Spain, Africk, and Asia minor, great numbers of mad men, insomuch, That they are compelled in all Cities of note, to build peculiar Hospitals for them. Leo Afer, lib. 3. de Fessa urbe, Ortelius and Zwinger, confirm as much: They are ordinarily so cholerick in their speeches, that scarce two words pass without railing or chiding in common talk, and often quarrelling in their streets.

Gordonius will have every man take notice of it: Note this (saith he) that in hot Countries it is far more familiar then in cold. Although this we have now said be not continually so, for as Acosta truly saith, under the Æquator it self, is a most temperate habitation, wholsom air, a Paradise of pleasure: The leaves ever green, cooling showres.

But it holds in such as are intemperately hot, as Johannes à Meggen, found in Cyprus, others in Malta, Apulia, and the Holy Land, where at some seasons of the yeer is nothing but dust, their Rivers dried up, the Air scorching hot, and Earth inflamed; insomuch, that many Pilgrims going barefoot for devotion sake, from Joppa to Jerusalem upon the hot sands, often run mad, or else quite overwhelmed with sand, profundis arenis, as in many parts of Africk, Arabia Deserta, Bactriana, now Charassan, when the West wind blows Involuti arenis transeuntes necantur.

Hercules de Saxonia a Professor in Venice, gives this cause, why so many Venetian women are melancholy, Quod diù sub sole degant, they tarry too long in the Sun. Montanus, consil. 21. amongst other causes assigns this; Why that Jew his Patient was mad, Quod tam multum exposuit se calori & frigori: He exposed himself so much to heat and cold.

And for that reason in Venice, there is little stirring in those brick paved streets in Summer about noon, they are most part then asleep: As they are likewise in the great Mogors Countries, and all over the East Indies. At Aden in Arabia, as Lodovicus Vertomannus relates in his travels, they keep their markets in the night, to avoid extremity of heat; and in Ormus, like cattle in a Pasture, people of all sorts lie up to the chin in water all day long.

At Braga in Portugal; Burgos in Castile; Messina in Sicily, all over Spain and Italy, their streets are most part narrow, to avoid the Sun beams. The Turks wear great Turbants ad fugandos solis radios, to refract the Sun beams; and much inconvenience, that hot air of Bantam in Java, yields to our men, that sojourn there for traffick; where it is so hot, that they that are sick of the Pox, lie commonly bleaching in the Sun, to dry up their sores.

Such a complaint I read of those Isles of Cape Verdo, fourteen degrees from the Æquator, they do malè audire: One calls them the unhealthiest clime of the World, for fluxes, feavers, frenzies, calentures, which commonly seize on Sea-faring men that touch at them, and all by reason of a hot distemperature of the air. The hardiest men are offended with this heat, and stiffest clowns cannot resist it, as Constantine affirms, Agricult. l. 2. c. 45.

They that are naturally born in such air, may not endure it, as Niger records of some part of Mesopotamia, now called Diarbecha: Quibusdam in locis sævienti æstui adeo subjecta est, ut pleræque animalia fervore solis & cœli extinguantur, ’tis so hot there in some places, that men of the Country and Cattle are killed with it: And Adricomius of Arabia felix, by reason of myrrhe, frankincense, and hot spices there growing, the air is so obnoxious to their brains, that the very inhabitants at some times cannot abide it, much less weaklings and strangers.

Amatus Lusitanus, cent. 1. curat. 45. reports of a young maid, that was one Vincent a Curriers daughter, some thirteen yeers of age, that would wash her hair in the heat of the day (in July) and so let it dry in the Sun, to make it yellow, but by that means tarrying too long in the heat, she inflamed her head, and made her self mad.

Cold air in the other extream, is almost as bad as hot, and so doth Montaltus esteem of it, c. 11. if it be dry withal. In those Northern Countries, the people are therefore generally dull, heavy, and many witches, which (as I have before quoted) Saxo Grammaticus, Olaus, Baptista Porta ascribe to melancholy. But these cold climes are more subject to natural melancholy (not this artificial) which is cold and dry: For which cause Mercurius Britannicus belike, puts melancholy men to inhabit just under the Pole.

The worst of the three is a thick, cloudy, misty, foggy air, or such as come from Fens, Moorish grounds, Lakes, Muckhils, Draughts, Sinks, where any carkasses, or carrion lies, or from whence any stinking fulsom smell comes: Galen, Avicenna, Mercurialis, new and old Physicians, hold that such air is unwholsom, and ingenders melancholy, plagues, and what not?

Alexandreta an haven town in the Mediterranean Sea, Saint John de Ullua, an haven in Nova-hispania, are much condemned for a bad air, so as Durazzo in Albania, Lituania, Ditmarsh, Pomptinæ paludes in Italy, the territories about Pisa, Ferrara, &c. Rumny Marsh with us; the Hundreds in Essex, the Fens in Lincolnshire.