e; so called "not necessary" because according to
[2105]Fernelius, "they may be avoided, and used without necessity." Many of
these accidental causes, which I shall entreat of here, might have well
been reduced to the former, because they cannot be avoided, but fatally
happen to us, though accidentally, and unawares, at some time or other; the
rest are contingent and inevitable, and more properly inserted in this rank
of causes. To reckon up all is a thing impossible; of some therefore most
remarkable of these contingent causes which produce melancholy, I will
briefly speak and in their order.

From a child's nativity, the first ill accident that can likely befall him
in this kind is a bad nurse, by whose means alone he may be tainted with
this [2106]malady from his cradle, Aulus Gellius _l. 12. c. 1._ brings in
Phavorinus, that eloquent philosopher, proving this at large, [2107] "that
there is the same virtue and property in the milk as in the seed, and not
in men alone, but in all other creatures; he gives instance in a kid and
lamb, if either of them suck of the other's milk, the lamb of the goat's,
or the kid of the ewe's, the wool of the one will be hard, and the hair of
the other soft." Giraldus Cambrensis _Itinerar. Cambriae, l. 1. c. 2._
confirms this by a notable example which happened in his time. A sow-pig by
chance sucked a brach, and when she was grown [2108]"would miraculously
hunt all manner of deer, and that as well, or rather better, than any
ordinary hound." His conclusion is, [2109]"that men and beasts participate
of her nature and conditions by whose milk they are fed." Phavorinus urges
it farther, and demonstrates it more evidently, that if a nurse be
[2110]"misshapen, unchaste, dishonest, impudent, [2111]cruel, or the like,
the child that sucks upon her breast will be so too;" all other affections
of the mind and diseases are almost engrafted, as it were, and imprinted
into the temperature of the infant, by the nurse's milk; as pox, leprosy,
melancholy, &c. Cato for some such reason would make his servants' children
suck upon his wife's breast, because by that means they would love him and
his the better, and in all likelihood agree with them. A more evident
example that the minds are altered by milk cannot be given, than that of
[2112]Dion, which he relates of Caligula's cruelty; it could neither be
imputed to father nor mother, but to his cruel nurse alone, that anointed
her paps with blood still w