The Anatomy of Melancholy

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.