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SUBSECT. 3. Symptomes of Melancholy abounding in the whole bodie.
Their bodies that are affected with this universall melancholy, are most part black, the melancholy juice is redundant all over, hirsute they are, and lean, they have broad veins, their bloud is gross and thick. Their Spleen is weak, and a Liver apt to ingender the humour; they have kept bad diet, or have had some evacuation stopped, as hæmrods, or moneths in women, which Trallianus in the cure, would have carefully to be inquired, and withall to observe of what complexion the party is of, black or red.
For as Forrestus and Hollerius contend, if they be black, it proceeds from abundance of naturall melancholy; if it proceed from cares, agony, discontents, diet, exercise, &c. they may be as wel of any other colour: red, yellow, pale, as black, and yet their whole bloud corrupt: prærubri colore sæpe sunt tales, sæpe flavi, (saith Montaltus cap. 22.) The best way to discern this species, is to let them bleed, if the blood be corrupt, thick and black, and they withall free from those hypocondriacall symptomes, & not so grievously troubled with them, or those of the head, it argues they are melancholy à toto corpore.
The fumes which rise from this corrupt blood, disturb the mind, and make them fearfull and sorrowfull, heavie hearted, as the rest, dejected, discontented, solitarie, silent, wearie of their lives, dull & heavie, or merrie, &c. and if far gone, that which Apuleius wished to his enemy, by way of imprecation, is true in them; Dead mens bones, hobgoblins, ghosts are ever in their minds, & meet them still in every turn: all the bugbears of the night, and terrors, fairy-babes of tombs, and graves are before their eyes, and in their thoughts, as to women and children, if they be in the dark alone.
If they hear, or read, or see any tragicall object, it sticks by them, they are afraid of death, and yet weary of their lives, in their discontented humours they quarrel with all the world, bitterly inveigh, taxe satyrically, and because they cannot otherwise vent their passions, or redress what is amiss, as they mean, they will by violent death at last be revenged on themselves.