114 JEROME CARDAN. 



lord archbishop would not have, as he had, the red com- 

 plexion of a healthy man ; moreover, the matter so col- 

 lecting and long standing in the head would turn corrupt 1 . 

 He believed that the thin fluid discharged was partly 

 serous humour, partly condensed vapour, which descended 

 from the brain into the lungs, not through the cavity of 

 the windpipe, for if so, it would be coughed out during 

 its downward passage, but through its coats, as water 

 soaks through linen. This thin humour and vapour he 

 supposed to be originally drawn into the brain by the in- 

 creased rarity in the substance of that organ, caused by 

 undue heat. Heat makes all things rare; and rarefaction 

 in one part of the body, to express the idea roughly, 

 produces suction from another. The thick expectorated 

 matter was formed, Cardan thought, from the food 2 . 



These notes, though they do not contain the whole of 

 Cardan's diagnosis, are enough to indicate the kind of 

 reasoning he used* He reasoned in the manner of the 

 faculty, but he excelled other physicians of his time in 

 shrewdness ; and although perfectly obedient to authority, 

 he used a skilled obedience, and was very willing to 

 receive instruction from experience that he acquired. He 



1 Cons. Med. p. 128. 



F 2 A century later medical science was but little more advanced. 

 This is the kind of reasoning that Moliere burlesqued. The com- 

 ments of Cassanate and Cardan on Hamilton's case illustrate perfectly 

 Sganarelle's theory of Lucinde's muteness in the Me'de'cm Malgre Lui. 

 Act ii. sc. 6. 



