[1489]gives the reason, because [1490]it infrigidates and dries up the body, consumes the spirits; and would therefore have all such as are cold and dry to take heed of and to avoid it as a mortal enemy. Jacchinus in 9 Rhasis, cap. 15, ascribes the same cause, and instanceth in a patient of his, that married a young wife in a hot summer, [1491]and so dried himself with chamber-work, that he became in short space from melancholy, mad: he cured him by moistening remedies. The like example I find in Laelius a Fonte Eugubinus, consult. 129, of a gentleman of Venice, that upon the same occasion was first melancholy, afterwards mad. Read in him the story at large. Any other evacuation stopped will cause it, as well as these above named, be it bile, [1492]ulcer, issue, &c. Hercules de Saxonia, lib. 1. c. 16, and Gordonius, verify this out of their experience. They saw one wounded in the head who as long as the sore was open, Lucida habuit mentis intervalla, was well; but when it was stopped, Rediit melancholia, his melancholy fit seized on him again. Artificial evacuations are much like in effect, as hot houses, baths, bloodletting, purging, unseasonably and immoderately used. [1493]Baths dry too much, if used in excess, be they natural or artificial, and offend extreme hot, or cold; [1494]one dries, the other refrigerates overmuch. Montanus, consil. 137, saith, they overheat the liver. Joh. Struthius, Stigmat. artis. l. 4. c. 9, contends, [1495]that if one stay longer than ordinary at the bath, go in too oft, or at unseasonable times, he putrefies the humours in his body. To this purpose writes Magninus, l. 3. c. 5. Guianerius, Tract. 15. c. 21, utterly disallows all hot baths in melancholy adust. [1496]I saw (saith he) a man that laboured of the gout, who to be freed of this malady came to the bath, and was instantly cured of his disease, but got another worse, and that was madness. But this judgment varies as the humour doth, in hot or cold: baths may be good for one melancholy man, bad for another; that which will cure it in this party, may cause it in a second. _Phlebotomy_.] Phlebotomy, many times neglected, may do much harm to the body, when there is a manifest redundance of bad humours, and melancholy blood; and when these humours heat and boil, if this be not used in time, the parties affected, so inflamed, are in great danger to be mad; but if it be unadvisedly, importunely, immoderately used, it doth as much harm by refrigerating the body, dulling the spirits, and consuming them: as Joh. [1497]Curio in his 10th chapter well reprehends, such kind of letting blood doth more hurt than good: [1498]The humours rage much more than they did before, and is so far from avoiding melancholy, that it increaseth it, and weakeneth the sight. [1499]Prosper Calenus observes as much of all phlebotomy, except they keep a very good diet after it; yea, and as [1500]Leonartis Jacchinus speaks out of his own experience, [1501]The blood is much