The Anatomy of Melancholy

SUBSECTION 4 Remedies that divert the humours

Remedies that divert the humours and those that purge them must go together, since they all serve the same purpose: to divert this rebellious humour and turn it another way. In this category, enemas and suppositories claim a leading place, to draw this humour away from the brain and heart towards the less noble parts.

Some would have them used regularly, a few days apart, and prepared with boiled seeds of anise, fennel and safflower, hops, thyme, epithyme, mallows, fumitory, bugloss, polypody, senna, Diasena, Hamech’s confection, cassia, Diacatholicon, Hierologodium, oil of violets, sweet almonds and so on.

For there is no doubt that an enema used at the right time cannot fail to do much good in this disease, as in most others. “Enemas nourish”: sometimes enemas provide nourishment, depending on how they are prepared, as I learned not long ago from a scholarly lecture by our Reader in natural philosophy, who discussed the subject using other noted physicians.

Most recommend things that stimulate urination, but not sweating. Trincavelius, consultation 16, chapter 1, forbids the latter in head melancholy. P. Byarus and others approve rubbing the external parts and bathing them with warm water. Instead of ordinary rubbing, Cardan prescribes rubbing with nettles until they blister the skin, a practice that Basardus Visontinus likewise praises highly.

Remedies that provoke sneezing, preparations to chew, and nasal medicines are generally accepted. Montaltus, chapter 34, and Hildesheim, Gleanings 2, folios 136 and 138, give several recipes for all three. Hercules de Saxonia tells of an empiric in Venice who had a powerful medicinal water for purging through the mouth and nostrils, which he regularly used for head melancholy and would not sell for any amount of gold.

Restoring menstrual and haemorrhoidal bleeding is very good treatment if they have previously been stopped. Faventinus would have the flow restored with horse-leeches, as would Hercules de Saxonia. Julius Alexandrinus, consultation 185 in Scoltzius’ collection, considers aloes more suitable. Most approve of horse-leeches in this case, to be applied to the forehead, nostrils and other places.

Montaltus, chapter 29, drawing on Alexander and others, prescribes cupping glasses and issues in the left thigh. Aretaeus, book 7, chapter 5, Paulus Regolinus and Sylvius would have the cups applied without scarification to the shoulders and back, thighs and feet. Montaltus, chapter 34, directs that an issue be opened in the arm or back of the head.

Piso prescribes ligatures, rubbing, suppositories and cupping glasses, again without scarification, and the rest.