In this Catalogue of Passions, which so much torment the Soul of man, and cause this malady (for I will briefly speak of them all, and in their order) the first place in this Irascible appetite, may justly be challenged by Sorrow. An inseparable companion, The mother and daughter of melancholy, her Epitome, Symptome, and chief cause: as Hippocrates hath it: They beget one another, and tread in a ring, for Sorrow is both Cause and Symptome of this disease. How it is a Symptome shall be shewed in his place.
That it is a cause all the world acknowledgeth, Dolor nonnullis insaniæ causa fuit, & aliorum morborum insanabilium, saith Plutarch to Apollonius; a cause of madness, a cause of many other diseases, a sole cause of this mischief, Lemnius cals it. So doth Rhasis cont. l. 1. tract. 9. Guianerius Tract. 15. c. 5. And if it take root once, it ends in despair, as Felix Plater observes, and as in a Cebes table, may well be coupled with it.
Chrysostome in his seventeenth Epistle to Olympia, describes it to be a cruel torture of the soul, a most inexplicable grief, poysoned worm, consuming body and soul, and gnawing the very heart, a perpetual executioner, continual night, profound darkness, a whirlewinde, a tempest, an ague not appearing, heating worse then any fire, & a battel that hath no end. It crucifies worse then any Tyrant, no torture, no strappado, no bodily punishment is like unto it.
’Tis the Eagle without question which the Poets fained to gnaw Prometheus heart, and no heaviness is like unto the heaviness of the heart, Ecclus 25.15,16. Every perturbation is a misery, but grief a cruel torment, a domineering passion: as in old Rome, when the Dictator was created, all inferior magistracies ceased: when grief appears, all other passions vanish. It dries up the bones, saith Solomon, c. 17. Pro. makes them hollow-ey’d, pale, and lean, furrow faced, to have dead looks, wrinkled browes, riveled cheeks, dry bodies, and quite perverts their temperature that are misaffected with it.
As Elenora that exil’d mournful Dutches (in our English Ovid) laments to her noble husband Humphry Duke of Glocester,
Sawest thou those eyes in whose sweet cheerful look,
Duke Humphry once, such joy and pleasure took,
Sorrow hath so despoil’d me of all grace,
Thou couldst not say this was my Elnors face.
Like a foule Gorgon, &c.
It hinders concoction, refrigerates the heart, takes away stomack, colour, and sleep, thickens the blood, (Fernelius l. 1. c. 18. de morb. causis) contaminates the spirits, Piso) Overthrowes the natural heat, perverts the good estate of body and minde, and makes them weary of their lives, cry out, howle and roar for very anguish of their soules.
David confessed as much, Psal. 38.8. I have roared for the very disquietness of my heart. And Psal. 119.4. part.4.v. My soul melteth away for very heaviness, vers. 38. I am like a bottle in the smoak. Antiochus complained that he could not sleep, and that his heart fainted for grief, Christ himself, Vir dolorum, out of an apprehension of grief, did sweat blood, Mark 14. His soul was heavy to the death, and no sorrow was like unto his.
Crato consil. 21. l. 2. gives instance in one that was so melancholy by reason of grief: and Montanus consil. 30. in a noble Matron, that had no other cause of this mischief. I. S. D. in Hildesheim, fully cured a patient of his, that was much troubled with melancholy, and for many years, but afterwards by a little occasion of sorrow, he fell into his former fits, and was tormented as before.
Examples are common, how it causeth melancholy, desperation, and sometimes death it self; for (Ecclus. 38.15.) Of heaviness comes death. Worldly sorrow causeth death, 2 Cor. 7.10. Psal. 31.10. My life is wasted with heaviness, and my years with mourning. Why was Hecuba said to be turned to a dog? Niobe into a stone? but that for grief she was sensless and stupid. Severus the Emperor dyed for grief: and how many myriads besides?
Tanta illi est feritas, tanta est insania luctus.
Melancthon gives a reason of it, the gathering of much melancholy blood about the heart, which collection extinguisheth the good spirits, or at least dulleth them, sorrow strikes the heart, makes it tremble and pine away, with great pain: And the black blood drawn from the spleen, and diffused under the ribs, on the left side, makes those perilous hypochondriacall convulsions, which happen to them that are troubled with Sorrow.