all their study must be to make a
melancholy man fat, and then the cure is ended." Diuretics, or medicines to
procure urine, are prescribed by some in this kind, hot and cold: hot where
the heat of the liver doth not forbid; cold where the heat of the liver is
very great: [4377]amongst hot are parsley roots, lovage, fennel, &c.: cold,
melon seeds, &c., with whey of goat's milk, which is the common conveyer.

To purge and [4378]purify the blood, use sowthistle, succory, senna,
endive, carduus benedictus, dandelion, hop, maidenhair, fumitory, bugloss,
borage, &c., with their juice, decoctions, distilled waters, syrups, &c.

Oswaldus, Crollius, _basil Chym._ much admires salt of corals in this case,
and Aetius, _tetrabib. ser. 2. cap. 114._ Hieram Archigenis, which is an
excellent medicine to purify the blood, "for all melancholy affections,
falling sickness, none to be compared to it."

MEMB. III.

SUBSECT. I.--_Cure of Hypochondriacal Melancholy_.

In this cure, as in the rest, is especially required the rectification of
those six non-natural things above all, as good diet, which Montanus,
_consil. 27._ enjoins a French nobleman, "to have an especial care of it,
without which all other remedies are in vain." Bloodletting is not to be
used, except the patient's body be very full of blood, and that it be
derived from the liver and spleen to the stomach and his vessels, then
[4379]to draw it back, to cut the inner vein of either arm, some say the
salvatella, and if the malady be continuate, [4380]to open a vein in the
forehead.

Preparatives and alteratives may be used as before, saving that there must
be respect had as well to the liver, spleen, stomach, hypochondries, as to
the heart and brain. To comfort the [4381]stomach and inner parts against
wind and obstructions, by Areteus, Galen, Aetius, Aurelianus, &c., and many
latter writers, are still prescribed the decoctions of wormwood, centaury,
pennyroyal, betony sodden in whey, and daily drunk: many have been cured by
this medicine alone.

Prosper Altinus and some others as much magnify the water of Nile against
this malady, an especial good remedy for windy melancholy. For which reason
belike Ptolemeus Philadelphus, when he married his daughter Berenice to the
king of Assyria (as Celsus, _lib. 2._ records), _magnis impensis Nili aquam
afferri jussit_, to his great charge caused the water of Nile to be carried
with her, and gave command, that during her life she