ormed, to get a good brood of
children, _Elegantissimas imagines in thalamo collocavit_, &c. hung the
fairest pictures he could buy for money in his chamber, "That his wife by
frequent sight of them, might conceive and bear such children." And if we
may believe Bale, one of Pope Nicholas the Third's concubines by seeing of
[1608]a bear was brought to bed of a monster. "If a woman" (saith [1609]
Lemnius), "at the time of her conception think of another man present or
absent, the child will be like him." Great-bellied women, when they long,
yield us prodigious examples in this kind, as moles, warts, scars,
harelips, monsters, especially caused in their children by force of a
depraved phantasy in them: _Ipsam speciem quam animo effigiat, faetui
inducit_: She imprints that stamp upon her child which she [1610]conceives
unto herself. And therefore Lodovicus Vives, _lib. 2. de Christ, faem._,
gives a special caution to great-bellied women, [1611]"that they do not
admit such absurd conceits and cogitations, but by all means avoid those
horrible objects, heard or seen, or filthy spectacles." Some will laugh,
weep, sigh, groan, blush, tremble, sweat, at such things as are suggested
unto them by their imagination. Avicenna speaks of one that could cast
himself into a palsy when he list; and some can imitate the tunes of birds
and beasts that they can hardly be discerned: Dagebertus' and Saint
Francis' scars and wounds, like those of Christ's (if at the least any such
were), [1612]Agrippa supposeth to have happened by force of imagination:
that some are turned to wolves, from men to women, and women again to men
(which is constantly believed) to the same imagination; or from men to
asses, dogs, or any other shapes. [1613]Wierus ascribes all those famous
transformations to imagination; that in hydrophobia they seem to see the
picture of a dog, still in their water, [1614]that melancholy men and sick
men conceive so many fantastical visions, apparitions to themselves, and
have such absurd apparitions, as that they are kings, lords, cocks, bears,
apes, owls; that they are heavy, light, transparent, great and little,
senseless and dead (as shall be showed more at large, in our [1615]
sections of symptoms), can be imputed to nought else, but to a corrupt,
false, and violent imagination. It works not in sick and melancholy men
only, but even most forcibly sometimes in such as are sound: it makes them
suddenly sick, and [1616]alters their t