84 JEKOME CARDAN. 



you bear testimony to a remarkable means of causing men to 

 become fat ; in the other, you assert that you have discovered 

 a wonderful mode of relieving those who are without breath, 

 or breathing painfully. We have succeeded in attaining 

 neither of these ends, though either invention would be in no 

 small degree convenient to our purpose. As for ocimum 1 and 

 its qualities, Dioscorides, Gralen, and Pliny, differ so much 

 that I can in no way reconcile their statements. 



" But enough has been said. 



"Finally, the most illustrious lord archbishop has com- 

 manded me to fix the month of January as that in which, on 

 some appointed day, you may be seen in Paris. I fear, indeed, 

 that the winter may oppose some delay against your coming, 

 or deprive you of the willingness to come. But need, ac- 

 cording to the precept of Hippocrates, begets urgency. Tare- 

 well, most excellent man. May the Lord of all men long 

 preserve you, and increase daily your genius as a writer, so 

 that you may long aid the study of medicine, and all that is 

 good in literature, in that way earning an immortal name. 

 Edinburgh, the 28th of September, 1551. WILLIAM CASSA- 

 NATE, Physician." 



Cardan replied to this letter that lie would go to Paris 

 that, indeed, precisely suited with, his previous humour, 

 and he required two hundred crowns as travelling ex- 

 penses for the journey thither, which were paid to him in 

 Milan. 



The lord archbishop, on behalf of whom this letter 

 had been sent by his body physician, William Cassanate, 



i Ocimum has not been identified with any modern herb. Pliny 

 states that it grew best when sown with cursing and railing. 



