"nerous fpirits, are, before others, moft obnox "ious to it ;" "for they are," fays Montaigne "ruined by their own ftrength and vivacity.

"Great wits to madmen nearly are ally'd,

"And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

THE MATTER OF MELANCHOLY has been a fubject of much controverfy among the learned; and neither Galen, nor any of the old writers, have fufficiently explained what this humour is,

whence it proceeds, or how it is engendered. Montanus, in his Confultations, and Arculanus, contrary to the opinion of Paracelfus, who wholly rejects and derides the divifion of four humours and complexions, hold melancholy to be material, and immaterial; that the material, or natural melancholy, proceeds from one of the four humours of which the blood is compofed; and that the immaterial, or unnatural, which Galen and Hercules de Saxonia fay, refides in the fpirits alone, proceeds from " a hot, cold, dry, moist distem

perature; which, without matter, alters the "fubftance of the brain, and changes its func❝tions." This material melancholy is either fimple or mixed, offending in quantity or quality; varying according to the place on which it fettles in the brain, the spleen, the meseraick veins, the heart, or the ftomach; and differing according to the mixture of thofe natural humours among themselves, or according as the four unnatural or aduft humours are diverfely tempered and intermixed. In a body that is cold and dry, if the natural melancholy abound to a greater degree than the body is enabled to bear, the body must unavoidably be diftempered, and impregnated with difeafe; fo if a body be depraved, whether the depravity arise from melancholy engendered from aduft choler, or from blood, the like effects will be produced. There

is

24 DEFINITION, AFFECTION, MATTER,

is fome difference of opinion whether this melancholy matter may be engendered of all the four humours. Galen, Valefius, Menardus, Fufchius, Montaltus, and Montanus, affert that it may be engendered of three alone, excluding flegm or pituita; but Hercules de Saxonia, Cardan, Guianerius, and Laurentius, hold that it may be engendered of flegm etfi rarò contingat, though it seldom come to pafs; and Melanct, in his book De Anima, and Chapter of Humours, fays, that he was an eye-witnefs of it, and calls it affininam; a dull and swinish melancholy. But Wecker says, from melancholy aduft arises one kind; from choler another, which is most brutish; from flegm another, which is dull ; and from blood another, which is the beft. Of thefe, fome are cold and dry; others, hot and dry; according as their mixtures are more or less intense or remitted: and, indeed, Rodericus à Fons clearly demonftrates, that ichores, and all ferous matters, when thickened to a certain degree, become flegm; that flegm degenerates into choler; and that choler aduft becomes aruginofa melancholia; as the pureft wine, when greatly putrified, makes the fharpeft vinegar. When this humour, therefore, is fharp, it produces troublesome thoughts, and direful dreams; if cold, it is the cause of dotage, fatuity, and fottishness; and if intenfely hot, it fires the

brain, and produces raving madness. The colour also of this mixture varies in proportion to its degrees of heat and coldness, as a burning coal, when it is hot, shines ; and when it is cold, looks black. This diversity of the matter of melancholy produces a diverfity of effects; for if it be within the body without being putrefied, it caufes black jaundice; if putrefied, a quartan ague; if it peers through the skin, leprofy; and if it trouble the mind, it produces, according to its intermixtures, the several species of madness and of melancholy.

THE SPECIES OF MELANCHOLY, therefore, must be as various as the modes of its matter are diverse and confufed. This variety has occafioned both the old and new writers upon this fubject to confound madness with melancholy, and to treat them as the fame disease, differing from each other only in extent and degree, as the humour is intense or remitted. Some make only two diftinct species of melancholy; but others acknowledge a multitude of kinds, and leave them, as Etius, in his Tetrabilos, has done, totally undefined. Avicenna, Arculanus, Rafis, and Montanus, say, that if natural melancholy be aduft, it forms one species; if of the blood, another species; and if composed of choler, a third, diftinct and different from the firft: and, indeed,

C

men who have written on it. Hercules de Saxonia reduces the fpecies to two only, material and immaterial; the one arifing from an affection of the fpirits only; and the other from the humours and the fpirits combined: but Savanarola infifts that the fpecies are infinite. But what these men fpeak of fpecies, I think ought to be understood of fymptoms; and, in this fenfe, Gorrheus, in his medicinal definitions, acknowledges they may be infinite; but infifts that they may be reduced to three kinds, by reafon of their respective feats in the head, the body, and the hypocondries; and this threefold divifion, which is now generally adopted, is approved by Hippocrates. But befides these three fpecies of head melancholy, corporeal melancholy, and hypocondriacal melancholy, to all of which we have given the name of HABITUAL MELANCHOLY, there are two others, denominated LOVE MELANCHOLY, and RELIGIOUS MELANCHOLY; the first proceeding from an improper indulgence of that powerful and univerfal paffion; and the fecond from an erroneous conception of that moft facred of all human duties, a reverence towards God and his holy religion.