BLACK BILE, OR MELANCHOLY.** According to the ancients it hath a twofold origin: 1st, From the groser parts of the blood, and this they called the melancholy humour. 2nd, From yellow bile being highly concocted. Dr Percival, in his Essays Med. and Exp. suggests, that it is the gall rendered acid by a stagnation in the gall-bladder, and rendered vicious by the absorption of its fluid parts. Bile in this state discharged into the duodenum, occasions universal disturbance and disorder until it is evacuated: it occasions violent vomiting, or purging, or both; and previous to this the pulse is quick, the head aches, a delirium comes on, a hiccup, intense thirst, inward heat, and a fetid breath. Some describe this kind of bile as being acid, harsh, corroding, and, when poured on the ground, bubbling up and raising the earth after the manner of a ferment. Dr Percival says, that by the use of the *infus. jena limon* warmed with the *tinct. columb.* he had checked the vomitings occasioned by this matter.

**ATRADIUS, in Antiquity,** denotes a fatal day whereon the Romans received some memorable defeat. The word literally imports a *black day*; a denomination taken from the colour; which is the emblem of death and mourning. Whence the Thracians had a custom of marking all their happy days with white stones or calculi, and their unhappy days with black ones; which they cast, at the close of each day, into an urn. At the person's death the stones were taken out; and from a comparison of the numbers of each complexion, a judgment was made of the felicity or infelicity of his course of life. The *dies atræ* or *atri* were afterwards denominated *nefasti* and *posteri.* Such in particular was the day when the tribunes were defeated by the Gauls at the river Allia, and lost the city; also that whereon the battle of Cannæ was fought; and several others marked in the Roman calendar, as *atré* or unfortunate.