_Costiveness_.] In the first rank of these, I may well reckon up
costiveness, and keeping in of our ordinary excrements, which as it often
causeth other diseases, so this of melancholy in particular. [1468]Celsus,
lib. 1. cap. 3, saith, "It produceth inflammation of the head, dullness,
cloudiness, headache," &c. Prosper Calenus, _lib. de atra bile_, will have
it distemper not the organ only, [1469]"but the mind itself by troubling of
it:" and sometimes it is a sole cause of madness, as you may read in the
first book of [1470]Skenkius's Medicinal Observations. A young merchant
going to Nordeling fair in Germany, for ten days' space never went to
stool; at his return he was [1471]grievously melancholy, thinking that he
was robbed, and would not be persuaded but that all his money was gone; his
friends thought he had some philtrum given him, but Cnelius, a physician,
being sent for, found his [1472]costiveness alone to be the cause, and
thereupon gave him a clyster, by which he was speedily recovered.
Trincavellius, _consult. 35. lib. 1_, saith as much of a melancholy lawyer,
to whom he administered physic, and Rodericus a Fonseca, _consult. 85. tom.
2_, [1473]of a patient of his, that for eight days was bound, and therefore
melancholy affected. Other retentions and evacuations there are, not simply
necessary, but at some times; as Fernelius accounts them, _Path. lib. 1.
cap. 15_, as suppression of haemorrhoids, monthly issues in women, bleeding
at nose, immoderate or no use at all of Venus: or any other ordinary
issues.

[1474]Detention of haemorrhoids, or monthly issues, Villanovanus _Breviar.
lib. 1. cap. 18._ Arculanus, _cap. 16. in 9. Rhasis_, Vittorius Faventinus,
_pract. mag. tract. 2. cap. 15._ Bruel, &c. put for ordinary causes.
Fuchsius, _l. 2. sect. 5. c. 30_, goes farther, and saith, [1475]"That many
men unseasonably cured of the haemorrhoids have been corrupted with
melancholy, seeking to avoid Scylla, they fall into Charybdis." Galen, _l.
de hum. commen. 3. ad text. 26_, illustrates this by an example of Lucius