The Anatomy of Melancholy

A third is a parish priest at Prague in Bohemia, “who was so far gone in melancholy that he was delirious and did not know what he was saying. But after he had taken twelve grains of stibium—as I myself saw and can testify, for I was called to witness this miraculous occurrence—

he expelled a great quantity of black bile, like little pieces of flesh, and all his excrement resembled black blood”—a medicine fitter for a horse than a man—“yet it did him so much good that the next day he was completely cured.” Sckenkius repeats this very story of the Bohemian priest word for word in his Experiments on Various Diseases, century 6, observation 6, with strong approval.

Hercules de Saxonia calls it a useful medicine when taken after food, up to six or eight grains, by those who vomit readily. Rodericus à Fonseca, the Spaniard and recent professor at Padua in Italy, praises it for this disease in volume 2, consultation 85. So does Lodovicus Mercatus, On the Treatment of Internal Diseases, book 1, chapter 17, with many others.

On the other side, Iacobus Gervinus, a French physician, rejects all this in book 2 of his refutation concerning poisons. He says that on the recommendation of Mattioli and others he took only three grains, but it almost killed him. He therefore concludes that “antimony is a poison rather than a medicine.” Thomas Erastus agrees with him, as does Ælian Montaltus in chapter 30, On Melancholy.

But why do I go on? Whole books deal with the subject; I could cite a hundred authors for and against it. I will conclude with Zwinger: antimony is like Scanderbeg’s sword, good or bad, strong or weak according to the person who prescribes or uses it. “It is a valuable medicine if properly administered to a strong man; otherwise, poison.” For its preparation, consult Evonymus’ Treasury, Quercetan, Oswald Croll’s Chemical Basilica, Basil Valentius and the rest.

Tobacco, divine, rare, superexcellent tobacco, surpassing all their panaceas, drinkable gold and philosophers’ stones: a sovereign remedy for every disease. A good emetic, I admit, a beneficial herb if properly tempered, taken at the right time and used medicinally. But as most men commonly abuse it, taking it as tinkers take ale, it is a plague, a scourge, a violent purger of possessions, land and health: hellish, devilish and damned tobacco, the ruin and destruction of body and soul.