Disputatio de phrenitide

Auenzoar, however, in book 1, tract 3, chapter 5, and Serapio in the first book of the Breviarium summary of medicine, affirm that the dura mater is more often attacked by inflammation, first because it is more capacious, and second because it is more removed from the noble member the brain, and therefore nature is less solicitous about its protection.

IX.

But this opinion has Hippocrates and Galen against it. For Hippocrates, in On Diseases from the beginning, proposes judgments and the cure of the inflamed brain, and in Aphorisms 7, 51, testifies that the brain can sphacelate undergo necrosis/gangrene. Galen, in Method of Healing 11, chapter 1, says that one should not use cupping glasses at the beginning of the disease, neither in the inflammation of the brain nor in that of its membranes. You have the same in On the Causes of Symptoms 2, chapter 7, and On the Prognosis from the Pulse, chapter 9, and 1 in 1 Prorrhetica commentaries on prognostications, comment 1.

X.

Avicenna confirms the same in the mentioned place. It is not absurd that soft members, such as the brain and lungs, can be inflamed, since they are nourished, increased, and extended according to every position; although membranes suffer this more frequently from hot and thin matter by way of reflux, while the substance of the brain suffers from thicker matter and by way of gradual congestion.

XI.

Wherefore it must be concluded that the membranes do indeed suffer inflammation more often, the pia mater from an internal cause and the dura mater from an external one; nevertheless, the brain can also be exercised by inflammation because of the stated causes. For it does not follow that because this member is softer and has more veins, it is therefore more frequently inflamed. If this were true, the lung would be inflamed more frequently than the muscles. Nor is it valid to say this member is more ignoble and thicker, therefore it is more frequently inflamed; for the fingernail is more ignoble and thicker than a membrane, and similarly bone than flesh; yet it does not suffer from an apostema more frequently.

XII.

But whether the brain is inflamed indiscriminately according to any part in phrenitis, or whether only