Therefore, encouraging promises, kind words, and gentle persuasion must be used by every means. Do not be too severe at first, or browbeat them, mock them, neglect them, or treat them with contempt; instead, as Lemnius urges, pity them and try by every agreeable means to bring them back to health.

But if reassurance cannot be achieved, and mild methods, promises, comforting words, and good counsel have no effect, then, as Cristóbal de Vega determines in book 3, chapter 14, on melancholy, treat them more roughly. Threaten and scold them, says Altomari; sometimes frighten them. Or, as Salviani would have it, lash and whip them, as we do a shying horse frightened without a cause. Or follow Rhazes’ advice: at one time speak gently and flatter them, at another frighten and scold them, as circumstances seem to require.

When none of these preceding remedies works, it will be worth doing what Savonarola and Eliano Montalto so highly recommend: “drive out one nail with another”—drive out one passion by another, or by its opposite, as they treat a nosebleed by drawing blood from the arm. Expel one fear with another, one grief with another. Cristóbal de Vega considers this rational medicine, “not contrary to reason.”

Lemnius strongly approves of “using a hard wedge for a hard knot”: driving out one disease with another, pulling out a tooth, wounding the patient, or castrating him, as Platter says was done to people with epilepsy in ancient times, because it completely alters the bodily constitution. Thus the pain of one may lessen the suffering caused by the other. “And I knew someone whose quartan fever was cured in this way, when his enemies suddenly came upon him.”

If we may believe Pliny, whom Scaliger calls “the father of falsehoods,” the father of lies, Quintus Fabius Maximus, that renowned Roman consul, was freed from a quartan fever in this way during a battle with the king of the Allobroges at the river Isaurus. Valesius, in his Controversies, considers this an excellent remedy and, if judiciously used for this illness, better than any medicine.

At other times it is worth deceiving them with a fabricated story, startling news, an ingenious device, or a contrivance. As they hate those who neglect or mock them, says Alexander, so they will listen to those who agree with them. If they say they have swallowed frogs or a snake, by all means agree, and tell them that you can easily cure it: it is an ordinary occurrence.

The physician Philodotus cured a melancholy king who thought his head had been cut off by putting a lead cap on it: the weight made him feel his head and freed him from his foolish imagining. A woman described by the same Alexander thought she had swallowed a serpent. He gave her an emetic and secretly placed a serpent of the kind she imagined in the basin; on seeing it, she recovered.

The most amusing delusion I ever read of, says Laurentius, concerned a gentleman at Siena in Italy who was afraid to urinate lest he flood the whole town. The physicians had the bells rung backwards and told him that the town was on fire; he then passed water and was immediately cured.

Another imagined that his nose was so large that he would strike it against the wall if he moved. His physician took a large piece of flesh, held it in his hand, and pinched the patient’s nose, making him believe that the flesh had been cut from it.

Forestus, in book 1 of his Observations, had a melancholy patient who thought he was dead. He placed a man in a chest beside the patient’s bed, as though he were a corpse, and had him raise himself a little and eat. The melancholy man asked the pretended corpse whether dead people were accustomed to eating food. He said yes; the patient then ate too and was cured.

Lemnius, in book 2, chapter 6 of On the Four Complexions, gives many such examples, as does Giovanni Pontano in book 4, chapter 2 of On Wisdom. Among the rest I find one especially memorable, recorded in the French Chronicles, concerning the Paris advocate mentioned earlier, who firmly believed that he was dead, and so forth. I have read a multitude of examples of melancholy people cured by such ingenious contrivances.