When the brain is inflamed, it is often so swelled that the sutures of
the skull are separated. The pain is very strong and permanent; there is
much anxiety, and much redness of the countenance, with swelling; the
eyes protrude, and the head swells. We must let blood from the arm, and
also detract by the nose, and from the vessels below the tongue. We are
also to use the fomentations suitable for inflammations of the head, and
cataplasms of a moistening and concocting nature.
* * * * *
COMMENTARY. This Section is taken from Aëtius (vi, 25), or Oribasius
(Synops. viii, 11.) See also Avicenna (iii, i, 3, c. 4); Haly Abbas
(Theor. ix, 4, and Pract. v, 14); Alsaharavius (Pract. i, 2, 9.)
The Arabians call it _massera_. Phlegmon of the brain, according to
Haly Abbas, is attended with swelling of the brain, so as to occasion
a separation at the sutures, redness of the face, acuteness of vision,
and sympathetic affection of the stomach. He recommends bleeding at the
arm, cooling laxatives, applications of cold things to the head, and so
forth. The translator of Alsaharavius calls it ‘flegmon’ and ‘apostema in
cerebro;’ says it is occasioned by a collection of corrupted blood in the
vessels of the brain; and directs general bleeding, opening of the nasal
vein, or of the sublingual. Avicenna’s account is nowise different from
our author’s.
Hippocrates makes mention of _sphacelus_ of the brain, which, he says,
generally proves fatal in three days. (Aphor. vii, 48.) From the
Commentary of Galen it would appear that by sphacelus he meant that state
which is the result of an extreme degree of inflammation. Another of his
commentators, Theophilus, states that by sphacelus was meant incipient
mortification. (Ed. Dietz, ii, 537.) It was therefore a species of
_ramollissement_. See an elaborate disquisition into the nature of the
sphacelus of Hippocrates by Dr. Coray. (Ad Hippocrat. de Aer. &c. 64.)