r is intended
or remitted. Of the same mind is [898]Areteus, Alexander Tertullianus,
Guianerius, Savanarola, Heurnius; and Galen himself writes promiscuously of
them both by reason of their affinity: but most of our neoterics 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 than melancholy, full of anger and clamour, horrible looks,
actions, gestures, troubling the patients with far greater vehemency both
of body and mind, 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 frenzy, that it is without a fever, and their memory is
most part better. It hath the same causes as the other, as choler adust,
and blood incensed, brains inflamed, &c. [899]Fracastorius adds, "a due
time, and full age" to this definition, to distinguish it from children,
and will have it confirmed impotency, to separate it from such as
accidentally come and go again, as by taking henbane, nightshade, wine, &c.
Of this fury there be divers kinds; [900]ecstasy, 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, and the witches in
Lapland, as Olaus Magnus writeth, _l. 3, cap. 18._ _Extasi omnia
praedicere_, answer all questions in an ecstasis you will ask; what your
friends do, where they are, how they fare, &c. The other species of this
fury are enthusiasms, revelations, and visions, so often mentioned by
Gregory and Bede 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_.] 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 persuaded but that they are wolves, or
some such beasts. [901]Aetius and [902]Paulus call it a kind 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. [903]Donat ab Altomari saith, that he
saw two of them in his time: [904]Wierus tells a story of such a one at
Padua 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wol