disease,
being that it is still taken into our bodies by respiration, and our more
inner parts. [1505]"If it be impure and foggy, it dejects the spirits, and
causeth diseases by infection of the heart," as Paulus hath it, _lib. 1. c.
49._ Avicenna, _lib. 1. Gal. de san. tuenda_. Mercurialis, Montaltus, &c.
[1506]Fernelius saith, "A thick air thickeneth the blood and humours."
[1507]Lemnius reckons up two main things most profitable, and most
pernicious to our bodies; air and diet: and this peculiar disease, nothing
sooner causeth [1508](Jobertus holds) "than the air wherein we breathe and
live." [1509]Such as is the air, such be our spirits; and as our spirits,
such are our humours. It offends commonly if it be too [1510]hot and dry,
thick, fuliginous, cloudy, blustering, or a tempestuous air. Bodine in his
fifth Book, _De repub. cap. 1, 5_, of his Method of History, proves that
hot countries are most troubled with melancholy, and that there are
therefore in Spain, Africa, and Asia Minor, great numbers of mad men,
insomuch that they are compelled in all cities of note, to build peculiar
hospitals for them. Leo [1511]Afer, _lib. 3. de Fessa urbe_, Ortelius and
Zuinger, confirm as much: they are ordinarily so choleric in their
speeches, that scarce two words pass without railing or chiding in common
talk, and often quarrelling in their streets. [1512]Gordonius will have
every man take notice of it: "Note this" (saith he) "that in hot countries
it is far more familiar than in cold." Although this we have now said be
not continually so, for as [1513]Acosta truly saith, under the Equator
itself, is a most temperate habitation, wholesome air, a paradise of
pleasure: the leaves ever green, cooling showers. But it holds in such as
are intemperately hot, as [1514]Johannes a Meggen found in Cyprus, others
in Malta, Aupulia, and the [1515]Holy Land, where at some seasons of the
year is nothing but dust, their rivers dried up, the air scorching hot, and
earth inflamed; insomuch that many pilgrims going barefoot for devotion
sake, from Joppa to Jerusalem upon the hot sands, often run mad, or else
quite overwhelmed with sand, _profundis arenis_, as in many parts of
Africa, Arabia Deserta, Bactriana, now Charassan, when the west wind blows
[1516]_Involuti arenis transeuntes necantur_. [1517]Hercules de Saxonia, a
professor in Venice, gives this cause why so many Venetian women are
melancholy, _Quod diu sub sole degant_, they tarry too lo