When the confessor encountered 'hypochondriac patients who went to confession too often', he either gave them as penance a severe punishment that 'diluted their thick, sluggish blood', or sent them on a long pilgrimage: The change of air, the long road, absence from home, distance from the objects that brought them suffering, the company of the other pilgrims, the slow energetic movements that they were forced to make by walking, all acted on them far more effectively than the comfortable journeys that nowadays pass for pilgrimages.