112 JEROME CARDAN. 



nate under the advice of the Parisians, and to suggest 

 what he took to be the true theory of the disorder, and 

 the proper way of trying for its cure. The consequence 

 of this explanation was, of course, that the archbishop (an 

 irascible man) was indignant at the body physician, and 

 the body physician was indignant at Cardan. Cassanate, 

 too, feared Jerome as a tale-teller, and the archbishop 

 reproached him for the time he had lost before coming to 

 a right understanding, being not the less annx>yed at such 

 delay when the new system of cure was found to give 

 relief. 



The whole opinion of Cardan upon his case was written 

 out for the archbishop at great length, as a help to those 

 doctors who might afterwards attend upon him. It 

 is included in a volume of professional opinions, carefully 

 drawn up after the manner of the time, whereof Jerome 

 kept copies, and which were subsequently given to the 

 world. A few notes from this document will not only 

 be found amusing, but will suggest, I think, a very clear 

 notion of the state of medical science in the sixteenth 

 century, and of the kind of practice in which the philo- 

 sopher, whose life we are here tracing, was engaged 1 . 



In the first place it should be stated, that in conversa- 



i The following are notes from the fifty-second opinion in the Con- 

 silia Medica, which occupies twenty-four double-columned folio pages 

 in the ninth volume of Cardan's works, pp. 124148. 



