Tes iatrikes kartos, or, A treatise de morborum capitis essentiis & pronosticis adorned with above three hundred choice and rare observations ... / by Robert Bayfield ...

CAP. IV. De inflammatione cerebri.

INflammatio cerebri, The inflammation of the brain is a swelling thereof, proceeding from blood poured forth out of the vessels into the void spaces of that part, and there putrifying.

As for the Prognosis, or foreknowledge of things, in this disease, if the Urine be white and extraor∣dinary clear, it signifies death, quia bilis ad caput rapitur: If there be a trembling of the tongue, or if they scrape together straws, there is but small hope of cure. If there appear to fall from the nostrils a black drop, sincere or bright, it is desperate, in regard it proceeds from a very vehe∣ment adustion. If a convulsion follow upon an in∣flammation of the brain, death is to be expected. There is very little or no hope of cure, if a deli∣rium being at the first present, there follow there∣upon gnashing and grating together of the teeth: Nam convulsio musculorum in temporibus & maxil∣lis significatur. Ea{que} etiam ad suppurationem tendens lethalis est: quia pus intra cranium & membranam evacuari non potest. Si sudor multus calidus à capi∣te, vel die critico copiosus sanguis naribus effluit, aliqua spes curationis est.

My brothers servant, twenty two years old, I remember, was taken with an inflammation of the

brain; he had a perpetual Delirium which began sensibly or gradually, by little and little, a red kind of colour and deformity of his face and eyes, caused through the heat which dried up the membranes; he had a swift and quick pulse, an acute and con∣tinual fever, which from third day to third day was exasperated; also salt and sharp tears did sometimes distill from his eyes. I gave notice to his friends of the danger he was in, and the impos∣sibility of his recovery, for so great an inflammati∣on in so moist and tender a part as the brain, doth quickly produce a sphacelus or mortification; yet his master being very importunate with me to do something for him, I opened a vein, prescribed cooling clysters, gave him gentle Apozems, &c. but all in vain, for on the seventh day he died.