JEROME CARDAN 273 



Hippocratic elements, heat, cold, moisture, and dryness, 

 and a glance at the Consilium which Cardan wrote out 

 on Archbishop Hamilton's illness, will show how com- 

 pletely he was under the sway of this same teaching. 

 The genius of Hippocrates was perhaps too sober and 

 orderly to win his entire sympathy ; the encyclopaedic 

 knowledge, the literary grace, and the more daring 

 flights of Galen's intellect attracted him much more 

 strongly. Hippocrates scoffed at charms and amulets, 

 while Galen commended them, and is said to have 

 invented the anodyne necklace which was long known 

 and worn in England. There is no need to specify 

 which of the masters Cardan would swear by in this 

 matter. The choice which Cardan made, albeit it was 

 exactly what might have been anticipated, was in every 

 respect an unfortunate one. He put himself under a 

 master whose teaching could have no other effect than 

 to accentuate the failings of the pupil, whereas had he 

 let his mind come under the more regular discipline of 

 Hippocrates' method, it is almost certain that the mass 

 of his work, now shut in dusty folios which stand un- 

 disturbed on the shelves for decade after decade, would 

 have been immeasurably more fruitful of good. With 

 all his industry in collecting, and his care in verifying, 

 his medical work remains a heap of material, and no- 

 thing more valuable. Learning and science would have 

 profited much had he put himself under the standard of 

 the Father of Medicine, and still more if fate had sent 

 him into being at some period after the world of letters 

 had learned to realize the capabilities of the inductive 

 system of Philosophy. 



It may readily be conceded that Cardan during his 

 career turned to good account the medical knowledge 

 which he had gathered from the best attainable sources, 



