Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

nature of it, unto this may be added the burnt, putrified ill humour,
which may make the same accidents, and therefore it is no marvel if
there be so great pains. Now the especial remedy is, that when the
humour begins to be expelled by the mouth, it be diverted by
medicines ministred upward and downward, to bring it to the lower
parts. If it be demanded, wherefore some persons being apt to
melancholic diseases, both in regard of complexion and ill order, are
not infected? I say that perhaps their bodies are more firm, and
consequently do more hardly receive an impression then others, or
by some other property, which in divers bodies is found to be divers,
as saith Avicenna. 1. 1. And if it be demaunded why Quicksilver
helps, or is more available than other medicines, except the distilling
of Triacle 94 before mentioned? it must be answered, to come of his
property, or rather manifest quality, because it is hot and moist in the
highest degrée, and the disease cold and dry.’
‘For Galen saith, 9. de tuenda sanitate. It is hard to finde such an
helpe as hath no hurt in it.’
1589 Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen’.
‘Faire Venus sonne. .. Lay now thy deadly Heben bow apart and
with thy mother mild come to mine aid.
Mammon’s garden: ‘Of direful deadly black, both leaf and bloom fit
to adorn the dead, and deck the dreary tomb, There mournful
cypress grew in greatest store, and trees of bitter gall, and Heben
sad.
Arthur ‘Till that they spied where towards them did pace an armed
knight, of bold and beauteous grace, Whose squire ‘bore after him
an heben lance, and covered shield.’ (Warriors used to dip the ends
of their arrows and lances in henbane to kill the prey).
1590 Paré, Ambroise, (1510?–1590). ‘The workes of that famous
chirurgion Ambrose Parey’ translated out of Latine and compared
with the French by Th: Johnson, 1634.
Henbane: ‘drunken, or otherwise taken inwardly by the mouth,
causes an alienation of the mind like drunkenness; this also is
accompanied with an agitation of the body, and exultation of the
spirits like sowning 95 . But amongst others, this is a notable symptom,
that the patients so dote, that they think themselves to be whipped:
whence their voice becomes so various, that somtimes they bray like
94 Triacle=Venetian treacle = Therica + Mythridatum (see 120BC)
95 Sowning = fainting