The Anatomy of Melancholy

The young must avoid wine altogether. Plato prescribes this, and would have magistrates themselves abstain as an example, highly praising the Carthaginians for their restraint in this respect. It was a good decree, a commendable practice, provided that it was followed for temperance rather than some mistaken reason: as the ancient Egyptians abstained because poets telling fables had declared that wine first sprang from the Giants’ blood, or from superstition, as our modern Turks do. For wine is “a poison to the soul and fuel for vice,” a plague in itself when taken immoderately.

For this reason women in hot countries were formerly forbidden to drink it and were punished as severely for drinking wine as for adultery. The young were forbidden it too, as Leonicus records in his Various Histories, book 3, chapters 87 and 88, drawing on Athenaeus and others. This is still practised in Italy and some other countries of Europe and Asia, as Claudius Minoes has fully illustrated in his commentary on Alciato’s twenty-third emblem. The rest of the diet must likewise be chosen with care.

It is no less fitting to avoid lust-provoking rocket And whatever prepares our bodies for Venus.

Eryngo is not good to take, And all foods that excite lust must be forsaken.

The foods with the opposite effect, which should be used, are cucumbers, melons, purslane, water lilies, rue, woodbine, ammi and lettuce, which Lemnius greatly praises for this purpose in book 2, chapter 42, as does Mizaldus in his Medical Garden. Above all the others stands vitex, or agnus castus, which Magninus says has a wonderful power.

At their solemn festival called the Thesmophoria, Athenian women had to abstain from men’s company for nine days. During this time, says Aelian, they placed in their beds a certain herb called Hanea, which calmed love’s burning flames and freed them from that violent passion’s torments. See more in Porta, Mattioli, Crescentius, book 5, and the chapters “On Satyriasis and Priapism” written by almost every herbalist and physician, Rhazes among them.

In some cases, however, if they are deeply dejected and physically weakened, and ready to despair through anguish, grief and an excessively keen sense of their misery, a cup of wine and a substantial diet are appropriate. So too, as Valescus advises, is “frequently having intercourse with another respectable woman.” Langius approves this from Rhazes in his Medical Letters, book 1, letter 24—“he recommends frequent intercourse”—and Guianerius supports it in treatise 16, chapter 16, as a very beneficial remedy.

When your groin swells, if a maidservant Or a homeborn slave is at hand, would you rather Burst with desire? I certainly would not, and so forth.