Hypochondriacal or flatuous melancholy, is that which the Arabians call mirachial, and is in my judgment the most grievous and frequent, though Bruel and Laurentius make it least dangerous, and not so hard to be known or cured.

"In this hypochondriacal or flatuous melancholy, the symptoms are so ambiguous," saith Crato in a counsel of his for a noblewoman, "that the most exquisite physicians cannot determine of the part affected.

One commodity above the rest which are melancholy, these windy flatuous have, lucidia intervalla, their symptoms and pains are not usually so continuate as the rest, but come by fits, fear and sorrow, and the rest: yet in another they exceed all others; and that is, they are luxurious, incontinent, and prone to venery, by reason of wind, et facile amant, et quamlibet fere amant.

"except it be manifest that superabundance of seed, or fullness of blood be a cause, or that love, or an extraordinary desire of Venus, have gone before," or that as Lod. Mercatus excepts, they be very flatuous, and have been otherwise accustomed unto it.

Of the cure of this flatuous melancholy, read more in Fienus de Flatibus, cap.

9; naturally melancholy less than they, but once taken they are never freed; though many are of opinion flatuous or hypochondriacal melancholy are most subject of all others to this infirmity.