of two or three leaves or more sometimes,
pounded in posset drink qualified with a little liquorice, or aniseed, to
avoid the fulsomeness of the taste, or as _Diaserum Fernelii_. Brassivola
_in Catart_. reckons it up amongst those simples that only purge
melancholy, and Ruellius confirms as much out of his experience, that it
purgeth [4186]black choler, like hellebore itself. Galen, _lib. G.
simplic_. and [4187]Matthiolus ascribe other virtues to it, and will have
it purge other humours as well as this.

Laurel, by Heurnius's method, _ad prax. lib. 2. cap. 24._ is put amongst
the strong purgers of melancholy; it is hot and dry in the fourth degree.
Dioscorides, _lib. 11. cap. 114._ adds other effects to it. [4188]Pliny
sets down fifteen berries in drink for a sufficient potion: it is commonly
corrected with his opposites, cold and moist, as juice of endive, purslane,
and is taken in a potion to seven grains and a half. But this and
asrabecca, every gentlewoman in the country knows how to give, they are two
common vomits.

Scilla, or sea-onion, is hot and dry in the third degree. Brassivola _in
Catart_. out of Mesue, others, and his own experience, will have this
simple to purge [4189]melancholy alone. It is an ordinary vomit, _vinum
scilliticum_ mixed with rubel in a little white wine.

White hellebore, which some call sneezing-powder, a strong purger upward,
which many reject, as being too violent: Mesue and Averroes will not admit
of it, [4190]"by reason of danger of suffocation," [4191]"great pain and
trouble it puts the poor patient to," saith Dodonaeus. Yet Galen, _lib. 6.
simpl. med._ and Dioscorides, _cap. 145._ allow of it. It was indeed [4192]
"terrible in former times," as Pliny notes, but now familiar, insomuch that
many took it in those days, [4193]"that were students, to quicken their
wits," which Persius _Sat. 1._ objects to Accius the poet, _Illas Acci
ebria veratro_. [4194]"It helps melancholy, the falling sickness, madness,
gout, &c., but not to be taken of old men, youths, such as are weaklings,
nice, or effeminate, troubled with headache, high-coloured, or fear
strangling," saith Dioscorides. [4195]Oribasius, an old physician, hath
written very copiously, and approves of it, "in such affections which can
otherwise hardly be cured." Hernius, _lib. 2. prax. med. de vomitoriis_,
will not have it used [4196]"but with great caution, by reason of its
strength, and then when antimony will do no good," which