80 JEROME CARDAN. 



the most humane prince, the regent of the kingdom of Scot- 

 land, the most illustrious Archbishop of St. Andrew's, whose 

 physician I have been for about four years, was vexed, at 

 the age of about thirty, ten years ago, with a periodic asthma." 

 [The medical account of the case I must abbreviate a little, 

 but the old theory of periodic asthma is too curious to be 

 omitted.] " The first accession of the disease was a distil- 

 lation from the brains into the lungs, associated at that time 

 with hoarseness, which, by the help of the physician then 

 present, was for the time removed, but there was a bad tem- 

 perature left in the brain ; it was too cold and moist, so that 

 an unnatural matter was collected in the head, which was 

 retained there for a short time, because the brain could 

 neither properly digest its own aliment (especially since it 

 was nourished with pituitous blood), nor had it power to 

 resolve the vapours brought into it from the parts below. 

 Things being left in this state by a preceding attack, it 

 happens that, whenever the whole body is filled with a matter 

 which as a substance vapour or quality, invades the brain, 

 there is a fresh accession of the complaint, that is to say, 

 there is a flow of the same humour down into the lungs. 

 This periodical distillation, the signs of which I will pass 

 over, is best known by the fact that it happens from an 

 obvious cause, suddenly, to] the patient apparently in good 

 health, except for the signs accompanying properly the fever 

 and the actual distillation. And this accession agrees almost 

 accurately with the conjunctions and oppositions of the moon. 

 Medical aid having been slighted, or at least not assiduously 

 sought (so does the strength of the disease seem able, in 

 course of time, to destroy the strength of the body), there is 

 now danger, especially as there is now a constant flow, and 

 most at night. The lungs are thus not slightly weakened. 



