The Anatomy of Melancholy

SUBSECTION 6 Remedies for accompanying symptoms: to bring sleep, and against fearful dreams, redness and so on

When you have used all the good means and assistance offered by alteratives, remedies that divert the humours, and mild purgatives, there will still be certain accompanying symptoms to correct and relieve: sleeplessness, fearful dreams, flushing of the face to a degree of redness, and so on.

Sleeplessness, caused by their continual cares, fears and sorrows, and by dry brains, is a symptom that greatly torments melancholic people. It must therefore be relieved quickly, and sleep procured by every means; sometimes it is a sufficient remedy in itself, without any other treatment. Schenck, in his Observations, gives an example of a woman cured in this way. The means of bringing sleep are internal or external.

Those taken internally are simple or compound medicines. Simple medicines include poppy, water lily, violets, roses, lettuce, mandrake, henbane, nightshade or solanum, saffron, hempseed, nutmegs and willows, with their seeds, juices, decoctions, distilled waters and so on. Compounds include syrups or opiate preparations, syrup of poppy, violets and mullein, which are commonly taken with distilled waters.

Take one ounce of diacodium, half a dram of diascordium, and three and a half ounces of lettuce water. Mix to make a draught to be taken at bedtime.

Nicholas’s Rest, Roman Philonium, the great Triphera, hound’s-tongue pills, Discordium, Paracelsus’ laudanum and opium are in use, and so on. Country people commonly make a posset with hempseed, which Fuchs condemns so strongly in his herbal; yet I have seen its good effect, and it may be used where better medicines are unavailable.

Paracelsus’ laudanum is prescribed in doses of two or three grains, with a dram of Discordium, which Oswald Croll recommends. Opium itself is used mostly externally, in a ball to be smelled, though the Turks commonly take it in the same quantity as a cordial; at Goa in the Indies the dose is forty or fifty grains.

Ruland calls Nicholas’s Rest “the last resort,” the final refuge; but for specific recipes for this and the others, consult Victorius Faventinus, the chapter on frenzy; Heurnius, the chapter on mania; Hildesheim, Gleanings 4, on sleep and waking; and so on.

Among those used externally are oil of nutmegs, obtained by extraction or pressing, with rosewater to anoint the temples, and oils of poppy, water lily, mandrake, purslane and violets, all for the same purpose.

Montanus, consultations 24 and 25, highly recommends aromatic preparations of opium, vinegar and rosewater. Laurentius, chapter 9, prescribes pomanders and small sachets; see his recipes. Codronchus prescribes wormwood to smell.