Disputatio de phrenitide

XLVII.
Regarding the intemperies intemperance/imbalance of humors, inflammation produces fever (which is a similaris morbus disease of the substance/texture of an organ, and is always joined with phrenitis, although sometimes it begins with it, and sometimes follows it, depending on how quickly or slowly the brain communicates this heat, which arises from the putrefaction of bile—which is not fever itself, but the cause of fever—to the heart). For as the cause is, so is the effect, and conversely.

XLVIII.
To the reasons they deduce from the authorities of Galen, it must be said that Galen does not make the temperature of the brain the immediate cause of instrumental action, but rather a mediate one, inasmuch as these actions are harmed through the intervention of an instrumental disposition. Otherwise, Galen would contradict himself, since in other places he attributes these operations to the structure of the brain. He speaks in this manner sometimes about vision, when he says it is harmed by an injured temperature; yet in Book 1, Methodus Medendi, Chapter 6, he posits the proximity of the cause of reception and alteration—made by colors in the crystalline humor—as smoothness, purity, and splendor, and makes the temperament a more remote cause, insofar as it is the cause of that smoothness, etc.

XLIX.
The solution to the other argument, which is deduced from the authority of Galen found in Book 3, On the Causes of Symptoms, is also easy. For first, the major premise, namely that a depraved action proceeds from intemperance alone, is not true. Because every harmed action, whether it be instrumental or of the substance, if it is not diminished or removed, is called depraved by Galen and all physicians, such as epileptic convulsive movements. Nor does Galen, in the cited place, make mention of such a distinction. Indeed, in the cited passage, he says that a disease which is simply organic only impedes and does not harm the function. This is nothing other than if he said: that organic disposition cannot corrupt the similaris substantial/texture-based action of the stomach, but can only vitiate its instrumental structure, yet nevertheless impede it, so that it does not take in the amount of food that would be needed for nutrition. Wherefore, it cannot be gathered from that, that a depraved action proceeds from intemperance alone.