THEIR bodies that are affected with this universal melancholy are most part black, "the melancholy juice is redundant all over," hirsute they are, and lean, they have broad veins, their blood is gross and thick. "Their spleen is weak," and a liver apt to engender the humour; they have kept bad diet, or have had some evacuation stopped, as hæmorrhoids, or months in women, which Trallianus, in the cure, would have carefully to be inquired, and withal to observe of what complexion the party is of; black or red. For as Forrestus and Hollerius contend, if they be black, it proceeds from abundance of natural melancholy; if it proceed from cares, agony, discontents, diet, exercise, &c., these may be as well of any other colour: red, yellow, pale, as black, and yet their whole blood corrupt: prærubri colore sæpe sunt tales, sæpe flavi, (saith Montaltus, cap. 22) The best way to discern this species, is to let them bleed, if the blood be corrupt, thick and black, and they withal free from those hypochondriacal symptoms, and not so grievously troubled with them, or those of the head, it argues they are melancholy, a toto corpore. The fumes which arise from this corrupt blood, disturb the mind, and make them fearful and sorrowful, heavy hearted as the rest, dejected, discontented, solitary, silent, weary of their lives, dull and heavy, or merry, &c., and if far gone, that which Apuleius wished to his enemy, by way of imprecation, is true in them; "Dead men's bones, hobgoblins, ghosts, are ever in their minds, and meet them still in every turn: all the bugbears of the night, and terrors, fairy-babes of tombs, and graves are before their eyes, and in their thoughts, as to women and children, if they be in the dark alone." If they hear, or read, or see any tragical object, it sticks by them, they are afraid of death, and yet weary of their lives, in their discontented humours they quarrel with all the world, bitterly inveigh, tax satirically, and because they cannot otherwise vent their passions or redress what is amiss, as they mean, they will by violent death at last be revenged on themselves.
