SUBSEC. 4. Dotage, Phrensie, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropia, Chorus sancti Viti, Extasis.

Dotage, Fatuity, or Folly, is a common name to all the following Species, as some will have it. Laurentius and Altomarus comprehended Madness, Melancholy, and the rest under this name, and call it the summum genus of them all. If it be distinguished from them, it is naturall or ingenite, which comes by some defect of the organs, and over-much brain, as we see in our common fooles; and is for the most part intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon some are wiser then others: or else it is acquire, an appendix or symptome of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continue, a signe of Melancholy it self.

Phrenitis, which the Greeks derive from the word φρὴν, is a Disease of the Minde, with a continual Madness or Dotage, which hath an acute feaver annexed, or else an inflammation of the Brain, or the Membranes or Kels of it, with an acute feaver, which causeth Madness and Dotage. It differs from Melancholy and Madness, because their dotage is without an ague: this continual, with waking, or Memory decayed, &c. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous; and many such like differences are assigned by Physicians.

Madness, Frensie, and Melancholy are confounded by Celsus, and many Writers: others leave out Frensie, and make Madness and Melancholy but one disease, which Iason Pratensis especially labours, and that they differ only secundum majus or minus, in quantity alone, the one being a degree to the other, and both proceeding from one cause. They differ intenso & remisso gradu, saith Gordonius, as the humor is intended or remitted. Of the same minde is Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus, Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius; and Galen himself writes promiscuously of them both by reason of their affinity: but most of our neotericks do handle them apart, whom I will follow in this Treatise.

Madness is therefore defined to be a vehement Dotage; or raving without a Fever, far more violent then Melancholy, full of anger and clamor, horrible looks, actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both of body and minde; without all fear and sorrow, with such impetuous force and boldness, that sometimes three or four men cannot hold them. Differing only in this from Phrensie, that it is without a Fever, and their memory is most part better.

It hath the same causes as the other, as Choler adust, & bloud incensed, Brains inflamed, &c. Fracastorius addes, a due time, and full age to this definition, to distinguish it from children, and will have it a confirmed Impotency, to separate it from such as accidently come & go again, as by taking Henbane, Nightshade, Wine, &c.

Of this fury there be divers kindes: Extasie, which is familiar with some persons, as Cardan saith of himself, he could be in one when he list; in which the Indian priests deliver their Oracles, & the witches in Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writeth, l. 3. cap. 18. Extasi omnia prædicere, answer all questions in an Extasis you will ask; what your friends do, where they are, how they fare, &c.

The other species of this fury are Enthusiasmes, Revelations, and Visions, so often mentioned by Gregory and Beda in their works; Obsession or possession of devils, Sibylline Prophets, and Poetical Furies; such as come by eating noxious Herbs, Tarantulas stinging, &c. which some reduce to this. The most known are these, Lycanthropia, Hydrophobia, Chorus sancti Viti.

Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls Cucubuth, others Lupinam insaniam, or Wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be perswaded but that they are Wolves, or some such beasts. Ætius and Paulus call it a kinde of Melancholy, but I should rather refer it to Madness, as most do.

Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. Donat ab Altomari saith, that he saw two of them in his time: Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua 1541. that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a Wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a Beare: Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eye-witness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor Husbandman that still hunted about graves, & kept in Churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, & fearful look.

Such belike or little better, were King Prætus daughters, that thought themselves kine. And Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kinde of Madness. This disease perhaps gave occasion to that bold assertion of Pliny, some men were turned into wolves in his time, and from wolves to men again: and to that fable of Pausanias, of a man that was ten years a Wolf, & afterwards turned to his former shape: to Ovids tale of Lycaon, &c.

He that is desirous to hear of this Disease, or more examples, let him read Austin in his 18. book de Civitate Dei, cap. 5. Mizaldus cent. 5. 77. Sckenkius lib. 1. Hildesheim spicel. 2. de Mania. Forrestus lib. 10. de morbis cerebri. Olaus Magnus, Vincentius Bellavicensis, spec. met. lib. 31. c. 122. Pierius, Bodine, Zuinger, Zeilger, Peucer, Wierus, Spranger, &c.

This malady, saith Avicenna, troubleth men most in Februarie, and is now adaies frequent in Bohemia and Hungary, according to Heurnius. Schernitzius will have it common in Livonia. They lye hid most part all day, and go abroad in the night, barking, howling, at graves and deserts; they have usually hollow eyes, scabbed legs and thighes, very dry and pale, saith Altomarus; he gives a reason there of all the symptomes, and sets down a brief cure of them.

Hydrophobia, is a kinde of madness, well known in every village, which comes by the biting of a mad dog, or scratching, saith Aurelianus; touching, or smelling alone sometimes as Sckenkius proves, and is incident to many other creatures as well as men: so called, because the parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor, supposing still they see a mad dog in it.