in medicine, worms generated in the head, where they cause so great a pain as sometimes to occasion distraction.
The encephali are very rare; but there are some difficulties wherein they swarm, from whence we are told pestilential fevers have wholly arisen. Upon the affection of one who died of this fever, a little, short, red worm was found in the head, which malmsey wine, wherein horseradish had been boiled, could only destroy. This medicine was afterwards tried on the sick, most of whom it cured.
The like worms have also been taken out by trepanning, and the patient cured. Those worms that generate in the nose, ears, and teeth, are also called encephali.