Erōtomania or A treatise discoursing of the essence, causes, symptomes, prognosticks, and cure of love, or erotique melancholy. Written by Iames Ferrand Dr. of Physick

CAP. IV. Of Melancholy, and its severall kinds.

MElancholy is defined by Galen to * 1.1 be a Dotage without a Fever, ac∣companied with Feare, and Sadnesse. For which cause the Greeks used the word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, to expresse a mans being out of his wits and senses. And in this sense it •••• taken by Aristophanes in his Plutus: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, by Heaven the Man's mad: and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, in the Attick Di∣••••ect signifies, to be a Foole, saies the ••choliast upon that place. Now that which we call Dotage, or Madnesse, the Greeks call by a more proper expression, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, which is then said to be tru∣•••• called so, when as any one of the most ••oble faculties of the Soule, as the Imagi∣nation, or Iudgement, is depraved: which ••ay plainly be observed in all Melancho∣ly

persons, seeing they frame to them∣selves a thousand Fantasticall Chimaera's, and Objects which neither have, nor even shall have any being in Nature.

Feare, and Sorrow are inseparable At∣tendants on this miserable Passion, which deprives the Soule, though in it selfe im∣mortall, of all the use and exercise of it powers and faculties. Now all Physitian•• in a manner, with one vote agree, that a•• the shadow followes the Body, so every Symptome followes some disease. And if so, wee may then lay it down for a mo•••• certaine Position and ground, that all Me∣lancholy attends some disease of a nature like it selfe; which, as they say, is the col•••• and dry Intemperature of the Braine which by consequence must therefore ne∣cessarily be the part affected, and the se•• of the Disease; as being, according to A••∣retaeus, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, the seat of Sensation not that the Braine is any whit ill affected in the figure or structure of it, seeing the•• is no appearance neither of any unnaturall Extuberancy, neither are the ventricles •••• the Braine oppressed or surcharged with any ill affected Humour; as in the Epilep¦••••,

or Apoplexy: But in the very substance ••nd temperature of it, which is exceed∣ingly dried and refrigerated: which may ••e easily collected out of Hippocrates lib. * 1.2 •• de morb. Epidem. where he saith, that ••hose that have the Falling sicknesse, have their fits of Melācholy intended or remit∣ted, in like measure as the melancholy humor gets possession either of the ven∣tricles, or else of the substance of the Braine: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉. If this hu∣mour, saith he, worke upon the mind, that ••s to say, the Temperature, by which the Noblest Actions of the soule are perfor∣med; it causeth Melancholy: but if it spreade it selfe through the ventricles, and hollow passages of the braine, it then causeth the Epilepsy, or falling sick∣nesse.

And here we are to take notice, that there are three kinds of Melancholy: the first is engendred of Black Choler, colle∣cted together in the braine. The second ••s produced, when as this humor is diffu∣sed through the veines generally over all the body: And the last is Flatuous, or Hy∣pocondriacall

Melancholy; so called so that the substance of this disease is seate in the Hypocondries, which comprehend the Liver, Spleen, Mesentery, Guts, the veine of the Matrix, and other adjoyning parts; all which may be the seat of Hypo∣condriacall Melancholy; and not the O••••∣fice of the Stomack only, which was the opinion of the Ancient Physitian Diocles and which hath been since very learnedl•• maintained by Io. Bapt. Sylvaticus, Con¦trov. 34.

So that we may very justly reduce thi•• disease of Love Melancholy to this la•• species, seeing that the parts affected in i•• are principally the Liver, and the pa•• adjoyning, from whence those black F••¦liginous vapours doe arise, which ascend∣ing up to the braine, doe hinder and per∣vert the principall faculties thereof: as shall more fully shew in the ensueing chapter.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Gal. de loc. aff. c. 7.
• * 1.2

  Sect. 8. Aph. 54.