_Division of Diseases_.] If you require a more exact division of these
ordinary diseases which are incident to men, I refer you to physicians;
[889]they will tell you of acute and chronic, first and secondary,
lethals, salutares, errant, fixed, simple, compound, connexed, or
consequent, belonging to parts or the whole, in habit, or in
disposition, &c. My division at this time (as most befitting my
purpose) shall be into those of the body and mind. For them of the
body, a brief catalogue of which Fuschius hath made, Institut. lib. 3,
sect. 1, cap. 11. I refer you to the voluminous tomes of Galen,
Areteus, Rhasis, Avicenna, Alexander, Paulus Aetius, Gordonerius: and
those exact Neoterics, Savanarola, Capivaccius, Donatus Altomarus,
Hercules de Saxonia, Mercurialis, Victorius Faventinus, Wecker, Piso,
&c., that have methodically and elaborately written of them all. Those
of the mind and head I will briefly handle, and apart.
SUBSECT. III.—_Division of the Diseases of the Head_.
These diseases of the mind, forasmuch as they have their chief seat and
organs in the head, which are commonly repeated amongst the diseases of
the head which are divers, and vary much according to their site. For
in the head, as there be several parts, so there be divers grievances,
which according to that division of [890]Heurnius, (which he takes out
of Arculanus,) are inward or outward (to omit all others which pertain
to eyes and ears, nostrils, gums, teeth, mouth, palate, tongue, weezle,
chops, face, &c.) belonging properly to the brain, as baldness, falling
of hair, furfur, lice, &c. [891]Inward belonging to the skins next to
the brain, called _dura_ and _pia mater_, as all headaches, &c., or to
the ventricles, caules, kells, tunicles, creeks, and parts of it, and
their passions, as caro, vertigo, incubus, apoplexy, falling sickness.
The diseases of the nerves, cramps, stupor, convulsion, tremor, palsy:
or belonging to the excrements of the brain, catarrhs, sneezing,
rheums, distillations: or else those that pertain to the substance of
the brain itself, in which are conceived frenzy, lethargy, melancholy,
madness, weak memory, sopor, or Coma Vigilia et vigil Coma. Out of
these again I will single such as properly belong to the phantasy, or
imagination, or reason itself, which [892]Laurentius calls the disease
of the mind; and Hildesheim, morbos imaginationis, aut rationis laesae,
(diseases of the imagination, or of injured reason,) which are three or
four in number, frenzy, madness, melancholy, dotage, and their kinds:
as hydrophobia, lycanthropia, Chorus sancti viti, morbi daemoniaci,
(St. Vitus's dance, possession of devils,) which I will briefly touch
and point at, insisting especially in this of melancholy, as more
eminent than the rest, and that through all his kinds, causes,
symptoms, prognostics, cures: as Lonicerus hath done de apoplexia, and
many other of such particular diseases. Not that I find fault with
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