The Anatomy of Melancholy

To these I may add Arnold’s bugloss wine, or the borage wine mentioned earlier, which Mizaldus calls “marvellous wine,” a wonderful wine, and Stockerus deigns to repeat word for word among his other recipes; Rubeus’ compound water from Savonarola; Pinetus’ balm; and Cardan’s hyacinth powder, with which, in his book On Remarkable Cures, he boasts of having cured many melancholic people in eight days. Sckenkius includes it among his noteworthy medicines.

There is Altomarus’ syrup, with which he solemnly calls God to witness that he has performed many excellent cures of this kind; Sckenkius mentions it in century 7, observation 80, and Daniel Sennertus greatly praises it in book 1, part 2, chapter 12. There is Rulandus’ remarkable water for melancholy, which in century 2, chapter 96, he calls “the golden spirit of life,” a “panacea”—what does he not call it?—and his perfect remedy of fifty eggs, Empirical Cures, century 1, cure 5, to be taken three each morning with a powder of his.

Faventinus, in his Empirical Practice, doubles this number of eggs and calls for 101, to be taken three at a time in the same way, which Sallust Salvian approves in On Medicine, book 2, chapter 1, with some of the same powder until all are used: a most excellent remedy for all melancholic and mad people.

Take two drachms each of epithyme and thyme, one ounce of white sugar, three grains of saffron and one drachm of cinnamon. Mix them to make a powder.

Yet all these are nothing beside chemical preparations of Aqua Chalidonia, quintessence of hellebore, salts, extracts, distillations, oils, drinkable gold and the like. Dr Anthony, in his book On Drinkable Gold, published in 1600, is wholly in favour of it.

“Although the whole school of Galenists, in wicked and ungrateful pride and contempt, detests it in practice, yet in more serious diseases, when their vegetable remedies do no good,” they are forced to seek help from minerals, “though they use them rashly, unprofitably, negligently and to no purpose.”

Rhenanus, a Dutch chemical physician, undertakes to defend Anthony in his book On Salt Rising from a Well, and makes light of everyone who speaks against him. But why do I meddle with this great controversy, the subject of so many volumes? Let Paracelsus, Quercetan, Crollius and the brethren of the Rosy Cross defend themselves as they can. Crato, Erastus and the Galenists attack them.

Paracelsus, for his part, boasts that by these means he has performed more celebrated cures than all Europe’s Galenists. He calls himself a monarch, and Galen and Hippocrates infants, illiterates and so on. As Thessalus once railed against the ancient Asclepiadean writers, “he despises others, exults, triumphs, overcomes all antiquity,” says Galen, as though speaking to Paracelsus, “declares himself a conqueror, and crowns his own achievements.”