Disputatio de phrenitide

LXVI.
Wherefore, if the physician is called to the patient from the beginning, he ought to do two things mainly. First, he ought to apply his entire effort to this, so that the disease does not gain strength. Unless this evil is met from the beginning, health is doubtful, and the help of a physician is invoked almost in vain. Secondly, that the matter which has already flowed in may be evacuated, and the symptoms corrected.

LXVII.
The first intention is accomplished by four types of remedies, namely: the regimen of life, diverting agents, repelling agents, and those correcting the hot intemperance of the head and humors. The second intention is completed by two types of remedies. First, one must study how the matter that has not been evacuated by the previous remedies may be resolved. Secondly, that the symptoms be corrected.

LXVIII.
In order to achieve these things, first of all, the regimen of life must be correctly established. The air should be neither too hot nor too cold; the latter impedes transpiration, the former fills the head. And if the patient is delighted by darkness, darkness is to be chosen; if by light, light is to be chosen. Pictures must always be removed from the bedroom. They are to be prohibited from all exercise, and if they cannot be kept in quiet by blandishments and admonitions, they are to be bound upon the bed. If the bowels do not flow of their own accord, they are to be excited by some cold-acting clyster. Let the food, if it is a little fuller than in other acute cases, be either refrigerating and moistening, such as barley water or soups altered with the juice of melon seeds, lettuce, or something similar, by which the humors are thickened so that they do not flow to the head any longer. Let the drink be barley water or sugared water; we do not use cold water as a drink, unless it is certain that there is no inflammation in the viscera, for the humors are thickened, an obstruction arises, and heat is increased.