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SUBSECT. 7. Sleeping and waking, causes.
What I have formerly said of Exercise, I may now repeat of Sleep. Nothing better than moderate sleep, nothing worse than it, if it be in extreames, or unseasonably used. It is a received opinion, that a melancholy man cannot sleep overmuch; Somnus supra modum prodest, as an only Antidote, and nothing offends them more, or causeth this malady sooner, then waking, yet in some cases sleep may do more harm then good in that flegmatick, swinish, cold, and sluggish melancholy, which Melancton speaks of, that thinkes of waters, sighing most part, &c.
It duls the Spirits, if overmuch, and senses, fils the head full of gross humors, causeth distillations, rheumes, great store of excrements in the brain, and all the other parts, as Fuchsius speaks of them, that sleep like so many Dormice.
Or if it be used in the day time, upon a full stomack, the body ill composed to rest, or after hard meats, it increaseth fearful dreams, Incubus, night walking, crying out, & much unquietness; such sleep prepares the body, as one observes, to many perilous diseases.
But as I have said, waking overmuch, is both a symptome, and an ordinary cause. It causeth driness of the brain, frensie, dotage, & makes the body dry, lean, hard, and ugly to behold, as Lemnius hath it. The temperature of the Brain is corrupted by it, the humors adust, the eyes made to sink into the head, choler increased, and the whole body inflamed:
and as may be added out of Galen 3. de sanitate tuenda, Avicenna 3. 1. it overthrows the natural heat, it causeth crudities, hurts concoction, and what not? Not without good cause therefore Crato consil. 21. lib. 2. Hildesheim spicel. 2. de delir. & Mania, Iacchinus, Arculanus on Rhasis, Guianerius and Mercurialis, reckon up this over-much waking, as a principal cause.