pecies, is to let them
bleed, if the blood be corrupt, thick and black, and they withal free from
those hypochondriacal symptoms, and not so grievously troubled with them,
or those of the head, it argues they are melancholy, _a toto corpore_. The
fumes which arise from this corrupt blood, disturb the mind, and make them
fearful and sorrowful, heavy hearted, as the rest, dejected, discontented,
solitary, silent, weary of their lives, dull and heavy, or merry, &c., and
if far gone, that which Apuleius wished to his enemy, by way of
imprecation, is true in them; [2649]"Dead men's bones, hobgoblins, ghosts
are ever in their minds, and meet them still in every turn: all the
bugbears of the night, and terrors, fairy-babes of tombs, and graves are
before their eyes, and in their thoughts, as to women and children, if they
be in the dark alone." If they hear, or read, or see any tragical object,
it sticks by them, they are afraid of death, and yet weary of their lives,
in their discontented humours they quarrel with all the world, bitterly
inveigh, tax satirically, and because they cannot otherwise vent their
passions or redress what is amiss, as they mean, they will by violent death
at last be revenged on themselves.

SUBSECT. IV.--_Symptoms of Maids, Nuns, and Widows' Melancholy_.

Because Lodovicus Mercatus in his second book _de mulier. affect. cap. 4._
and Rodericus a Castro _de morb. mulier. cap. 3. lib. 2._ two famous
physicians in Spain, Daniel Sennertus of Wittenberg _lib. 1. part 2. cap.
13._ with others, have vouchsafed in their works not long since published,
to write two just treatises _de Melancholia virginum, Monialium et
Viduarum_, as a particular species of melancholy (which I have already
specified) distinct from the rest; [2650](for it much differs from that
which commonly befalls men and other women, as having one only cause proper
to women alone) I may not omit in this general survey of melancholy
symptoms, to set down the particular signs of such parties so misaffected.

The causes are assigned out of Hippocrates, Cleopatra, Moschion, and those
old _Gynaeciorum Scriptores_, of this feral malady, in more ancient maids,
widows, and barren women, _ob septum transversum violatum_, saith Mercatus,
by reason of the midriff or _Diaphragma_, heart and brain offended with
those vicious vapours which come from menstruous blood, _inflammationem
arteriae circa dorsum_, Rodericus adds, an inflammation of the back, wh