The Anatomy of Melancholy

MEMBER 2. Retention and evacuation corrected.

In discussing the causes, I have shown the harm constipation has done in bringing on this disease. If it is so harmful, its opposite must surely be good, or at least the middle course must be, as indeed it is, and is necessary for this cure. “It is most beneficial,” says Montalto, chapter 27: it helps very greatly.

Altomarus, chapter 7, recommends a morning walk into pleasant, green fields, but insists that these ordinary bodily wastes first be evacuated, naturally or through medical help. Piso calls it “the benefit of the belly”: the belly's benefit, help or pleasure, for it gives it great relief. Laurentius, chapter 8, and Crato, consultation 21, book 2, prescribe this at least once a day. Where nature fails, treatment must supply the lack, through laxative electuaries, suppositories, preserved prunes, turpentine and enemas, as will be shown.

Prosper Calenus, in his book On Black Bile, recommends enemas for hypochondriacal melancholy, to be used whenever the occasion requires. Peter Cnemander, in a consultation for a hypochondriacal patient, would have the patient's bowels kept continually loose, and gives many recipes for potions and enemas to that end.

Mercurialis, consultation 88, prescribes enemas first if this benefit does not come of its own accord; so does Montanus in consultations 24, 31 and 229. He recommends turpentine for this purpose, and repeats the advice in consultation 230, for an Italian abbot.

It is very good to wash the hands and face often, change one's clothes, wear clean linen, and be neatly and becomingly dressed; for “filth corrupts”—dirt defiles and depresses anyone who lives in it, whether by choice or through poverty; it dulls the spirits.

Baths are either artificially prepared or natural. Both have their particular uses in this illness and, as Alexander supposes in book 1, chapter 16, provide as speedy a remedy as any other treatment whatever. Aetius would have them used daily: “frequent baths,” Tetrabiblos 2, section 2, chapter 9. Galen boasts of the many cures of this kind he has achieved through baths alone, and Rufus's pills, moistening people who are otherwise dry.

Rhazes makes it a principal treatment: “Let the whole treatment consist in moistening”—to bathe and then anoint with oil. Jason Pratensis, Laurentius in chapter 8, and Montanus give their particular recipes for artificially prepared baths.

Crato, consultation 17, book 2, recommends boiling mallows, camomile, violets and borage in the bathwater, and sometimes using clean water alone. In the following consultation he says, “We have found that a bath of fresh water alone has very often been beneficial.” So do Fuchsius, book 1, chapter 33, and Frisimelica, book 2, consultation 42, in Trincavelius. Besides herbs, some prescribe boiling a ram's head and other things.

Fernelius, consultation 44, would have baths used for ten or twelve consecutive days. The patient must enter on an empty stomach and remain in a moderate warmth, followed by rubbing all over the body. Laelius Eugubinus, consultation 142, and Christophorus Aererus, in a consultation of his, consider bathing once or twice a week sufficient. The water should be warm, not hot, to avoid sweating.