Disputatio de phrenitide

LXII.
Every phrenitis, as Hippocrates writes (1 Prognostics) and Galen in the same place (Commentary 23), is always lethal because it is a most acute disease, both by reason of the affected place and by reason of its essence, because it is most hot and perpetually afflicts with fever. It is, however, less dangerous if it happens with laughter, as Hippocrates testifies (6 Aphorisms 53). Men suffer more severely than women, and among men, the young are more in danger than those of other ages. The elderly are rarely seized, and if they are seized, they do not survive, etc.

LXIII.
If phrenitis is made from the permutation of pneumonia, it is mortal, as Hippocrates testifies (6 Aphorisms). Clear and watery urine is so bad that Galen (4 Aphorisms 72) dared to affirm that no one has been saved with such urine. He affirms the same in the first Prorrhetics regarding white dejections. To these, other things can be added which are found here and there in medical books.

LXIV.
Phrenitis also has this peculiarity, if it is true and exquisite, that it ends or is terminated on the seventh day, as Galen testifies. But if it is terminated, it happens in many ways. For sometimes it is resolved; sometimes it is evacuated by way of a crisis (such as by sweat, by a flow of blood from the nostrils, by the opening of hemorrhoids, sometimes by the derivation of matter to the glands behind the ears); sometimes it is even suppurated, or changed into another disease. This true termination is dangerous, but the latter exists as a healthy one.

LXV.
Since this disease is very acute, it gives no respite. Therefore, this evil must be met immediately from the beginning, lest the Apostema abscess/inflammation gain strength, as Hippocrates testifies (4 Aphorisms 10), when he says: To treat in very acute cases, if the matter incites on that very day, is to delay the evil in such cases; and that with the most powerful medicines, as Hippocrates commands (1 Aphorisms 6): Extreme and exquisite remedies are suitable for extreme diseases.