r
to the production of this malady: a hot liver and cold stomach, or cold
belly: look for instances in Hollerius, Victor Trincavelius, _consil. 35,
l. 3_, Hildesheim _Spicel. 2, fol. 132_, Solenander _consil. 9, pro cive
Lugdunensi_, Montanus _consil. 229_, for the Earl of Montfort in Germany,
1549, and Frisimelica in the 233 consultation of the said Montanus. I.
Caesar Claudinus gives instance of a cold stomach and over-hot liver,
almost in every consultation, _con. 89_, for a certain count; and _con.
106_, for a Polonian baron, by reason of heat the blood is inflamed, and
gross vapours sent to the heart and brain. Mercurialis subscribes to them,
_cons. 89_, [2445]"the stomach being misaffected," which he calls the king
of the belly, because if he be distempered, all the rest suffer with him,
as being deprived of their nutriment, or fed with bad nourishment, by means
of which come crudities, obstructions, wind, rumbling, griping, &c.
Hercules de Saxonia, besides heat, will have the weakness of the liver and
his obstruction a cause, _facultatem debilem jecinoris_, which he calls the
mineral of melancholy. Laurentius assigns this reason, because the liver
over-hot draws the meat undigested out of the stomach, and burneth the
humours. Montanus, _cons. 244_, proves that sometimes a cold liver may be a
cause. Laurentius _c. 12_, Trincavelius _lib. 12, consil._, and Gualter
Bruel, seems to lay the greatest fault upon the spleen, that doth not his
duty in purging the liver as he ought, being too great, or too little, in
drawing too much blood sometimes to it, and not expelling it, as P.
Cnemiandrus in a [2446]consultation of his noted _tumorem lienis_, he names
it, and the fountain of melancholy. Diocles supposed the ground of this
kind of melancholy to proceed from the inflammation of the pylorus, which
is the nether mouth of the ventricle. Others assign the mesenterium or
midriff distempered by heat, the womb misaffected, stopping of
haemorrhoids, with many such. All which Laurentius, _cap. 12_, reduceth to
three, mesentery, liver, and spleen, from whence he denominates hepatic,
splenetic, and mesaraic melancholy. Outward causes, are bad diet, care,
griefs, discontents, and in a word all those six non-natural things, as
Montanus found by his experience, _consil. 244._ Solenander _consil. 9_,
for a citizen of Lyons, in France, gives his reader to understand, that he
knew this mischief procured by a medicine of cantharides, whic