The Anatomy of Melancholy

Mattioli’s hellebore treatment, with which he boasts of having performed so many different cures: “I never administered it,” he says, “without their being successfully cured, with God’s help, after one or two doses.” He describes its preparation at length in his third book of Letters, to the physician George Hankshius. Gualter Bruel and Heurnius mention it with strong approval, as does Skenkius in his Memorable Cures and Experimental Medicines, century 6, observation 37.

Then there is Montanus’ famous hellebore treatment, so often repeated in his consultations and counsels, such as number 28, for a melancholic priest, and consultation 148, for a hypochondriacal patient. He boasts that it is “a most sovereign remedy for all melancholic people, which he has often administered without harm and found effective through long experience and observation.”

Quercetan prefers a syrup of hellebore in his Spagyric Pharmacopoeia, and an extract of hellebore, chapter 5, likewise of his own invention, to every other remedy: “a very safe medicine, and not unsuitable for children.”

Paracelsus, in his book on black hellebore, accepts this medicine, but only as he prepares it. “It is quite certain,” he says, “that this herb has great powers and remarkable effects, differing little from balsam itself. Anyone who knows how to use it properly possesses more skill than all their books contain or all the doctors in Germany can display.”

Ælianus Montaltus, in his excellent work On Diseases of the Head, chapter 31, On Melancholy, gives a particular recipe of his own for hellebore, which he used successfully in his practice. Since it is short, I shall set it down.

Take two ounces of apple syrup, four ounces of borage water, and six or eight grains of black hellebore, infused overnight in a tied packet. Strain it in the morning and administer it.

You will find other recipes for it, serving the same purpose, in his work. Valescus admires Hali’s powder, and Jason Pratensis follows him. Our new London Pharmacopoeia has recently revived its preparation. “Suppose,” he says, “that all other medicines fail: with God’s help this alone will succeed. It is a crowned medicine that must be kept secret.”

Take half an ounce of epithyme, two ounces each of lapis lazuli and agaric, one drachm of scammony, and twenty cloves. Reduce everything to powder; let the patient take four scruples of the powder each week.