Disputatio de phrenitide

a conclusion: if the best action proceeds from the best temperament, therefore also a bad action from a bad temperament.

XLIV.
They confirm this same thing afterwards in this manner: Every depraved action arises from bad intemperance: for an instrumental disease, as Galen teaches, On the Causes of Symptoms 3, chapter 1, only impedes and does not harm the action, except by Accident: but the Action vitiated in Phrenitis is depraved and not impeded. Therefore it arises from intemperance.

XLV.
But with the peace of these men, I would say that I believe this opinion is not true. For first, it does not seem likely to reason that these operations follow the temperament of the brain immediately. For since the phantasy or imagination, which is an instrumental action, is primarily harmed in this affection, it necessarily follows also that the brain, with respect to that harmed action, is affected not as it is similar, but as it is instrumental. For it is impossible that a similar disease harms an organic action, or an organic disease harms a similar action, primarily and in itself: for it would follow that an action could be harmed even though the disposition from which it is immediately issued was not harmed: which cannot happen by any means.

XLVI.
Wherefore, let it be established that these functions are harmed by an organic disposition, and indeed by inflammation, but not immediately as others have wished, but rather through the medium of another disease, the cause of which is inflammation, insofar as it emits certain hot and bilious vapors that are mixed with the spirits, and produce a depraved composition or structure of the whole brain, which a depraved action also follows. For this vapor causes either that the spirits are moved inordinately, or the natural disposition of the brain is contaminated and vitiated on account of its admixture, wherefore there is no need for the middle part of the brain to be inflamed more than the posterior, or the membranes more than the substance: provided only that those hot vapors are mixed with the spirits.