nd produce this disease of himself.
_Quibusdam medicorum visum_, saith [1243]Avicenna, _quod Melancholia
contingat a daemonio_. Of the same mind is Psellus and Rhasis the Arab.
_lib. 1. Tract. 9. Cont_. [1244]"That this disease proceeds especially from
the devil, and from him alone." Arculanus, _cap. 6. in 9. Rhasis_, Aelianus
Montaltus, in his _9. cap_. Daniel Sennertus, _lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 11._
confirm as much, that the devil can cause this disease; by reason many
times that the parties affected prophesy, speak strange language, but _non
sine interventu humoris_, not without the humour, as he interprets himself;
no more doth Avicenna, _si contingat a daemonio, sufficit nobis ut
convertat complexionem ad choleram nigram, et sit causa ejus propinqua
cholera nigra_; the immediate cause is choler adust, which [1245]
Pomponatius likewise labours to make good: Galgerandus of Mantua, a famous
physician, so cured a demoniacal woman in his time, that spake all
languages, by purging black choler, and thereupon belike this humour of
melancholy is called _balneum diaboli_, the devil's bath; the devil spying
his opportunity of such humours drives them many times to despair, fury,
rage, &c., mingling himself among these humours. This is that which
Tertullian avers, _Corporibus infligunt acerbos casus, animaeque
repentinos, membra distorquent, occulte repentes_, &c. and which Lemnius
goes about to prove, _Immiscent se mali Genii pravis humoribus, atque
atrae, bili_, &c. And [1246]Jason Pratensis, "that the devil, being a
slender incomprehensible spirit, can easily insinuate and wind himself into
human bodies, and cunningly couched in our bowels vitiate our healths,
terrify our souls with fearful dreams, and shake our minds with furies."
And in another place, "These unclean spirits settled in our bodies, and now
mixed with our melancholy humours, do triumph as it were, and sport
themselves as in another heaven." Thus he argues, and that they go in and
out of our bodies, as bees do in a hive, and so provoke and tempt us as
they perceive our temperature inclined of itself, and most apt to be
deluded. [1247] Agrippa and [1248]Lavater are persuaded, that this humour
invites the devil to it, wheresoever it is in extremity, and of all other,
melancholy persons are most subject to diabolical temptations and
illusions, and most apt to entertain them, and the Devil best able to work
upon them. But whether by obsession, or possession, or other