The Turks have a drink called coffee (for they use no wine), so named of a berry as black as soot, and as bitter, (like that black drink which was in use amongst the Lacedaemonians, and perhaps the same,) which they sip still of, and sup as warm as they can suffer; they spend much time in those coffeehouses, which are somewhat like our alehouses or taverns, and there they sit chatting and drinking to drive away the time, and to be merry together, because they find by experience that kind of drink, so used, helpeth digestion, and procureth alacrity.  Some of them take opium to this purpose.

Borage, balm, saffron, gold, I have spoken of; Montaltus, c. 23. commends scorzonera roots condite.  Garcius ab Horto, plant. hist. lib. 2. cap. 25. makes mention of an herb called datura, [4323]"which, if it be eaten for twenty-four hours following, takes away all sense of grief, makes them incline to laughter and mirth:”  and another called bauge, like in effect to opium, “which puts them for a time into a kind of ecstasy,” and makes them gently to laugh.  One of the Roman emperors had a seed, which he did ordinarily eat to exhilarate himself. [4324]Christophorus Ayrerus prefers bezoar stone, and the confection of alkermes, before other cordials, and amber in some cases. [4325]"Alkermes comforts the inner parts;” and bezoar stone hath an especial virtue against all melancholy affections, [4326]"it refresheth the heart, and corroborates the whole body.” [4327]Amber provokes urine, helps the body, breaks wind, &c.  After a purge, 3 or 4 grains of bezoar stone, and 3 grains of ambergris, drunk or taken in borage or bugloss water, in which gold hot hath been quenched, will do much good, and the purge shall diminish less (the heart so refreshed) of the strength and substance of the body.

       “[Symbol:  Rx]. confect.  Alkermes [Symbol:  Ounce]ss lap.  Bezor.
        [Symbol:  Scruple]j.  Succini albi subtiliss. pulverisat. [Symbol: 
        Scruple]jj. cum Syrup, de cort. citri; fiat electuarium.”

To bezoar stone most subscribe, Manardus, and [4328]many others; “it takes away sadness, and makes him merry that useth it; I have seen some that have been much diseased with faintness, swooning, and melancholy, that taking the weight of three grains of this stone, in the water of oxtongue, have been cured.”  Garcias ab Horto brags how many desperate cures he hath done upon melancholy men by this alone, when all physicians had forsaken them.  But alkermes many except against; in some cases it may help, if it be good and of the best, such as that of Montpelier in France, which [4329]Iodocus Sincerus, Itinerario Galliae, so much magnifies, and would have no traveller omit to see it made.  But it is not so general a medicine as the other.  Fernelius, consil. 49, suspects alkermes, by reason of its heat, [4330]"nothing” (saith he) “sooner exasperates this disease, than the use of hot working meats and medicines, and would have them for that cause warily taken.”  I conclude, therefore, of this and all other medicines, as Thucydides of the plague at Athens, no remedy could be prescribed for it, Nam quod uni profuit, hoc aliis erat exitio:  there is no Catholic medicine to be had:  that which helps one, is pernicious to another.