SUBSECTION 2 Single substances that purge melancholy downwards

Polypody and epithyme are gentle purgatives of melancholy, beyond all objection. Dioscorides holds that they evacuate phlegm; but Brasavola affirms from experience that they purge this humour. They are used in decoctions, infusions and so on, singly or mixed.

All five kinds of myrobalans are successfully prescribed against melancholy and quartan fevers. Brasavola speaks from “a thousand experiences”; he gave them in pills, decoctions and so on. Consult him for particular recipes.

In this list of purgatives of black bile I find stoechas, fumitory, dodder, herb mercury, caper roots, genista or broom, pennyroyal and half-boiled cabbage; oregano, feverfew, ammoniac salt and saltpetre. But these are very gentle; also alyppus, dragon root, centaury, dittany and colutea, which Fuchs, chapter 168, and others take to be senna, though most distinguish them.

Senna stands midway between violent and gentle downward purgatives, hot in the second degree and dry in the first. Brasavola calls it “a wonderful herb against melancholy: it cleanses the blood, brightens the spirits and shakes off sorrow.” It is “a most beneficial medicine,” as Dodoens calls it, discovered by the Arabians and unheard of before.

It is taken in various ways, as a powder or infusion, but most commonly as an infusion, with ginger or some cordial flowers added to temper its effects. Actuarius recommends it boiled in broth with an old rooster, or in whey, the usual vehicle for substances that purge black bile; or steeped in wine, which Heurnius considers sufficient without any further tempering.

Most say that aloes purges choler; but Aurelianus, Chronic Diseases, book 2, chapter 6; Arculanus, chapter 6 on the ninth book of Rhazes; Julius Alexandrinus, consultation 185 in Scholtz; and Crato, consultation 189 in Scholtz, prescribe it for this disease. Following Mesue, Rhazes, Serapio and Avicenna, they consider it good for the stomach and for opening the haemorrhoidal veins. Menardus opposes this in his Letters, book 1, letter 1: aloes “does not open the veins or provoke haemorrhoidal bleeding.” Leonhart Fuchs likewise affirms this in his Paradoxes, book 1; but Brasavola and Dodoens defend Mesue on the basis of their experience. Let Valesius settle the controversy.

Armenian stone and lapis lazuli are highly praised by Alexander, book 1, chapter 16, Avicenna, Aetius and Actuarius, provided they are thoroughly washed until the water is no longer coloured—fifty times, some say. “That good Alexander,” says Guainerius, “places such confidence in this one medicine that he thought it could cure every melancholic disorder. For my part, I have often used it successfully and have never been disappointed by its action.”

The same may be said of lapis lazuli, although it is somewhat weaker than the other. Garcia da Orta, History, book 1, chapter 65, reports that Moorish physicians routinely prescribe it for all melancholic disorders; and Mattioli, Letters, book 3, boasts of the consistent success he has had in administering it. Nicholas Meripsa places it among the best remedies in his Antidotes, section 1, chapter 12.

“If this will not serve,” says Rhazes, “nothing remains but Armenian stone and hellebore itself.” Valescus and Jason Pratensis strongly recommend Hali’s powder, which is made from it. James Damascene, book 2, chapter 12, Hercules de Saxonia and others speak well of it. Crato does not approve: it and both hellebores, he says, are no better than poison. Victor Trincavelli, book 2, chapter 14, found from experience that it was “very harmful, troubling the stomach and injuring the bodies of those who take too much.”

Black hellebore, that renowned plant and famous purgative of melancholy, so widely used and admired throughout antiquity, was first discovered by a shepherd named Melampodius, as Pliny records in book 25, chapter 5. Seeing it purge his goats when they were raving, he tried it on Elize and Calene, the daughters of King Proetus, who ruled in Arcadia near the spring Clitorius, and restored them to their former health.

In Hippocrates’ time it alone was in demand, so much so that he wrote a book about it, a fragment of which still survives. Theophrastus, Galen, Pliny, Caelius Aurelianus—as ancient as Galen—book 1, chapter 6; Aretaeus, book 1, chapter 5; Oribasius, a famous Greek, Collection, book 7; Aetius, section 3, chapters 112 and 113; Paul of Aegina, Galen’s imitator, book 7, chapter 4; Actuarius; Trallianus, book 5, chapter 15; and Cornelius Celsus, the only surviving author of the old Latin writers, book 3, chapter 23: all praise and admire this excellent plant.

The ancients generally esteemed it so highly for this disease, among others, that they sent people who were mentally disordered or delirious to the Anticyras, or to Phocis in Achaia, to be purged, since the plant was plentiful there. In Strabo’s time this was a common journey: “Let him sail to Anticyra.” It was a familiar proverb among Greeks and Romans, telling a fool or madman to go and take hellebore.

Thus in Lucian, Menippus says to Tantalus: “Tantalus, you are talking nonsense; you need a draught of hellebore, and quite undiluted at that.” You are out of your little wits, O Tantalus, and must drink hellebore, without anything mixed with it. Aristophanes says in The Wasps, drink hellebore, and so on; and Harpax, in the comic playwright, told Simo and Ballio, two foolish fellows, that they needed purging with this plant.