Disputatio de phrenitide

the middle part of the brain first labors under inflammation, while the remaining parts do so by consensus; likewise, whether the reasoning or the imaginative faculty is damaged first in phrenitis; this is not without controversy. Which, however, setting aside the authority of men, can be easily determined from the nature of the thing.

XIII.

Those who wish the reasoning faculty to be damaged first in this affection try to prove it with these reasons. Reasoning is always damaged in phrenitis, and other faculties are not; therefore the reasoning faculty labors first in this sickness.

XIV.

Then they prove the same from the name imposed on this affection; for they say that this affection was called phrenitis by the ancients because they saw that the φρένας phrenas, that is, the mind, was damaged. To these, they subsequently add the authorities of the Greeks and Arabs, affirming that the mind is primarily affected in this sickness.

XV.

Those, however, who wish the middle part of the brain to be exercised by inflammation first use this main argument: the reasoning faculty is primarily and per se damaged in phrenitis; but this faculty is placed in the middle part of the brain, therefore the middle part of the brain also labors primarily in this affection.

XVI.

They try to prove afterwards by many reasons that this faculty is placed in the middle part of the brain; some of which prove universally that the operation of the brain occurs in different places, while others confirm it occurs in specific places, such as imagination in the front, discourse in the middle, and memory in the posterior part of the brain.

XVII.

Three reasons proving this universally are chiefly posed by them, the first of which is as follows: All operations that are proper and different must also have proper and different organs, just as