MEMBER 2 SUBSECTION 1 Single substances that purge upwards

Melangoga, medicines that purge melancholy, are either single substances or compounds, acting gently or violently, upwards or downwards. The following purge upwards. Asarum, or asarabacca, is, according to Mesue, hot in the second degree and dry in the third. “It is commonly taken in wine or whey”; or, as among us, the juice of two or three leaves, sometimes more, is pounded into posset drink, tempered with a little liquorice or aniseed to prevent its nauseating taste; or it is used as Fernel’s Diaserum.

Brasavola, in his work on purgatives, lists it among the single substances that purge only melancholy. Ruel confirms from experience that it purges black bile like hellebore itself. Galen, book 6, On Simple Medicines, and Mattioli attribute other powers to it and maintain that it purges other humours as well.

Heurnius, in his Method of Practice, book 2, chapter 24, classes laurel among the strong purgatives of melancholy. It is hot and dry in the fourth degree. Dioscorides, book 11, chapter 114, attributes other effects to it. Pliny gives fifteen berries in a drink as a sufficient potion. It is usually tempered with substances of the opposite qualities, cold and moist, such as endive or purslane juice, and taken in a potion in an amount of seven and a half grains. But every country gentlewoman knows how to administer this and asarabacca: they are two common emetics.

Squilla, or sea onion, is hot and dry in the third degree. Brasavola, in his work on purgatives, relying on Mesue, others and his own experience, maintains that this single substance purges melancholy alone. It is a common emetic: squill wine, mixed with Rubel in a little white wine.

White hellebore, which some call sneezing powder, is a powerful upward purgative, rejected by many as too violent. Mesue and Averroes will not allow it “because of the danger of suffocation,” and, as Dodoens says, “the great pain and distress it causes the poor patient.” Yet Galen, book 6, On Simple Medicines, and Dioscorides, chapter 145, approve it.

It was indeed “terrifying in former times,” as Pliny notes, but has now become familiar. In those days many students took it “to sharpen their wits,” a charge Persius brings against the poet Accius in his first satire: “Accius’ Iliad, drunk on hellebore.” “It helps melancholy, epilepsy, madness, gout and so on, but must not be taken by old people, the young, the weak, the delicate or effeminate, or those who have headaches, a high colour or fear of choking,” says Dioscorides.

Oribasius, an ancient physician, wrote at great length about it and approves its use “in conditions that can scarcely be cured otherwise.” Heurnius, in his Medical Practice, book 2, on emetics, would use it “only with great caution because of its strength, and when antimony does no good.” This led Hermophilus to compare it to a valiant captain—as Codroncus observes in chapter 7 of his Commentary on Hellebore—who sees all his soldiers go before him and comes “behind the front ranks,” like the boasting soldier, last himself. When other remedies fail in long-established melancholy, in a desperate case, this emetic is to be taken.

Yet, for all this, if properly prepared, it may safely be given at the outset. Mattioli boasts that he has often used it to many people’s benefit; and Heurnius says that “he has used it successfully, prepared according to his own prescription,” with good results. Christophorus à Vega, book 3, chapter 41, likewise considers its administration permissible. Our country gentlewomen find through their regular practice that there is no such great danger in it.

Dr Turner, discussing this plant in his Herbal, says that in his time it was a common household recipe to give powdered hellebore up to the weight of two pence, and he does not much object. But people commonly exceed that amount—for who is as bold as blind Bayard?—and prescribe it by the pennyworth and in similarly unreasonable ways, as I myself have heard market people ask for it in an apothecary’s shop.

God knows with what success. They often suffer for their rash boldness and folly: they burst a vein, make their eyes almost start from their heads, or kill themselves. The fault, then, lies not in the medicine but in its ignorant and reckless use.

Anyone wishing to know when to use it, how to prepare it correctly and in what dose should read Heurnius, Medical Practice, book 2; Brasavola, On Purgatives; Godefridus Stegius, Emperor Rudolf’s physician, chapter 16; Mattioli on Dioscorides; and Baptista Codronchus’ excellent Commentary on White Hellebore, which “is worth all the others.” There he will find a great variety of examples and recipes.

Antimony, or stibium, which our chemical physicians praise so highly, is taken either as the substance itself or as an infusion, and so on, and is frequently prescribed for this disease. “It helps all ailments arising from black bile, epilepsy and hypochondriacal disorders,” says Mattioli. To support his claim further, he gives several examples of people who have been relieved by it:

One is Andrew Gallus, a physician of Trent, who, after many other attempts, “attributes his recovery, after God, to this remedy alone.” Another is George Handschius, who similarly, when other medicines failed, “was restored by it to his former health; and others, as he knows, have likewise tried this admirable medicine and recovered through its help.”