on him, and then like a lame dog
or broken-winged goose he droops and pines away, and is brought at last to
that ill habit or malady of melancholy itself. So that as the philosophers
make [941]eight degrees of heat and cold, we may make eighty-eight of
melancholy, as the parts affected are diversely seized with it, or have
been plunged more or less into this infernal gulf, or waded deeper into it.
But all these melancholy fits, howsoever pleasing at first, or displeasing,
violent and tyrannizing over those whom they seize on for the time; yet
these fits I say, or men affected, are but improperly so called, because
they continue not, but come and go, as by some objects they aye moved. This
melancholy of which we are to treat, is a habit, _mosbus sonticus_, or
_chronicus_, a chronic or continuate disease, a settled humour, as [942]
Aurelianus and [943]others call it, not errant, but fixed; and as it was
long increasing, so now being (pleasant, or painful) grown to an habit, it
will hardly be removed.

SECT. I. MEMB. II.

SUBSECT. I.--_Digression of Anatomy_.

Before I proceed to define the disease of melancholy, what it is, or to
discourse farther of it, I hold it not impertinent to make a brief
digression of the anatomy of the body and faculties of the soul, for the
better understanding of that which is to follow; because many hard words
will often occur, as mirach, hypocondries, emerods, &c., imagination,
reason, humours, spirits, vital, natural, animal, nerves, veins, arteries,
chylus, pituita; which by the vulgar will not so easily be perceived, what
they are, how cited, and to what end they serve. And besides, it may
peradventure give occasion to some men to examine more accurately, search
further into this most excellent subject, and thereupon with that royal
[944]prophet to praise God, ("for a man is fearfully and wonderfully made,
and curiously wrought") that have time and leisure enough, and are
sufficiently informed in all other worldly businesses, as to make a good
bargain, buy and sell, to keep and make choice of a fair hawk, hound,
horse, &c. But for such matters as concern the knowledge of themselves,
they are wholly ignorant and careless; they know not what this body and
soul are, how combined, of what parts and faculties they consist, or how a
man differs from a dog. And what can be more ignominious and filthy (as
[945]Melancthon well inveighs) "than for a man not to know the structure
and composition