cures: as Lonicerus hath done _de
apoplexia_, and many other of such particular diseases. Not that I find
fault with those which have written of this subject before, as Jason
Pratensis, Laurentius, Montaltus, T. Bright, &c., they have done very well
in their several kinds and methods; yet that which one omits, another may
haply see; that which one contracts, another may enlarge. To conclude with
[893]Scribanius, "that which they had neglected, or perfunctorily handled,
we may more thoroughly examine; that which is obscurely delivered in them,
may be perspicuously dilated and amplified by us:" and so made more
familiar and easy for every man's capacity, and the common good, which is
the chief end of my discourse.

SUBSECT. IV.--_Dotage, Frenzy, Madness, Hydrophobia, Lycanthropia, Chorus
sancti Viti, Extasis_.

_Delirium, Dotage_.] Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the
following species, as some will have it. [894]Laurentius and [895]
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 natural or ingenite, which comes by some defect of the organs,
and overmuch brain, as we see in our common fools; and is for the most part
intended or remitted in particular men, and thereupon some are wiser than
others: or else it is acquisite, an appendix or symptom of some other
disease, which comes or goes; or if it continue, a sign of melancholy
itself.

_Frenzy_.] _Phrenitis_, which the Greeks derive from the word [Greek:
phraen], is a disease of the mind, with a continual madness or dotage,
which hath an acute fever annexed, or else an inflammation of the brain, or
the membranes or kells of it, with an acute fever, 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_.] Madness, frenzy, and melancholy are confounded by Celsus, and
many writers; others leave out frenzy, and make madness and melancholy but
one disease, which [896]Jason Pratensis especially labours, and that they
differ only _secundam majus_ or _minus_, in quantity alone, the one being a
degree to the other, and both proceeding from one cause. They differ
_intenso et remisso gradu_, saith [897]Gordonius, as the humou