which definition of his, Mercurialis de affect. cap. lib. 1. cap. 10. taxeth:  but Aelianus Montaltus defends, lib. de morb. cap. 1. de Melan. for sufficient and good.  The common sort define it to be “a kind of dotage without a fever, having for his ordinary companions, fear and sadness, without any apparent occasion.”  So doth Laurentius, cap. 4. Piso. lib. 1. cap. 43. Donatus Altomarus, cap. 7. art. medic.  Jacchinus, in com. in lib. 9.  Rhasis ad Almansor, cap. 15. Valesius, exerc. 17. Fuschius, institut. 3. sec. 1. c. 11. &c. which common definition, howsoever approved by most, [1028]Hercules de Saxonia will not allow of, nor David Crucius, Theat. morb.  Herm. lib. 2. cap. 6. he holds it insufficient:  as [1029]rather showing what it is not, than what it is:  as omitting the specific difference, the phantasy and brain:  but I descend to particulars.  The summum genus is “dotage, or anguish of the mind,” saith Aretaeus; “of the principal parts,” Hercules de Saxonia adds, to distinguish it from cramp and palsy, and such diseases as belong to the outward sense and motions [depraved] [1030]to distinguish it from folly and madness (which Montaltus makes angor animi, to separate) in which those functions are not depraved, but rather abolished; [without an ague] is added by all, to sever it from frenzy, and that melancholy which is in a pestilent fever. (Fear and sorrow) make it differ from madness:  [without a cause] is lastly inserted, to specify it from all other ordinary passions of [fear and sorrow.] We properly call that dotage, as [1031]Laurentius interprets it, “when some one principal faculty of the mind, as imagination, or reason, is corrupted, as all melancholy persons have.”  It is without a fever, because the humour is most part cold and dry, contrary to putrefaction.  Fear and sorrow are the true characters and inseparable companions of most melancholy, not all, as Her. de Saxonia, Tract. de posthumo de Melancholia, cap. 2. well excepts; for to some it is most pleasant, as to such as laugh most part; some are bold again, and free from all manner of fear and grief, as hereafter shall be declared.

SUBSECT.  II.—­Of the part affected.  Affection.  Parties affected.

Some difference I find amongst writers, about the principal part affected in this disease, whether it be the brain, or heart, or some other member.  Most are of opinion that it is the brain:  for being a kind of dotage, it cannot otherwise be but that the brain must be affected, as a similar part, be it by [1032]consent or essence, not in his ventricles, or any obstructions in them, for then it would be an apoplexy, or epilepsy, as [1033]Laurentius well observes, but in a cold, dry distemperature of it in his substance, which is corrupt and become too cold, or too dry, or else too hot, as in madmen, and such as are inclined to it:  and this [1034] Hippocrates confirms, Galen, the Arabians, and most of our new