JEROME CARDAN 269 



Medicine had been specially stimulated by the vivifying 

 spirit of Greek science ; in the Roman school in the days 

 of Celsus, and in the Arabian teaching likewise. Fuller 

 acknowledgment of the authority of Greek Medicine 

 came with the Renaissance, 1 but even this long step in 

 advance did not immediately liberate the art from 

 bondage. A new generation of professors arose who 

 added fresh material to the storehouses, already over- 

 flowing, of pedantic erudition, and showed the utmost 

 contempt for any fruit of other men's labour which might 

 not square exactly with the utterances of the founders. 

 This attitude rendered these professors of Medicine the 

 legitimate objects of ridicule, as soon as the leaven of 

 the revival began to work, and the darts of satire still 

 fly, now and then, at the same quarry. Paracelsus, dis- 

 figured as his teaching was by mysticism, the arts of the 

 charlatan, and by his ignorant repudiation of the service 

 of Anatomy, struck the first damaging blows at this 

 illegitimate ascendency, by the frequent success of his 

 empirical treatment, by the contempt he heaped upon 

 the scholastic authorities, and by the boldness with 

 which he assailed every thesis which they maintained. 

 Men of more sober intellect and weighty learning soon 

 followed in his track. Fernelius, one of the physicians 

 Cardan met in Paris, boldly rejected what he could 

 not approve by experience in the writings of Hippo- 

 crates and Galen, and stood forth as the advocate for 

 free inquiry, and Joubert of Montpelier, Argentier of 

 Turin, and Botal of Asti subsequently took a similar course. 

 When Cardan went to study at Pavia in 1519 this 

 tradition was unshaken. It was not until the advent of 

 Vesalius that the doom of the ancient system was 



1 In 1443 a copy of Celsus was found at Milan ; Paulus 

 was discovered a little later. 



