274 JEROME CARDAN 



and that he was on the whole the most skilful physician 

 of his age. He likewise foreshadowed the system of 

 deaf mute instruction. A certain Georgius Agricola, a 

 physician of Heidelberg who died in 1485, makes mention 

 of a deaf mute who had learnt to read and write, but 

 this statement was received with incredulity. Cardan, 

 taking a more philosophic view, declared that people 

 thus afflicted might easily be taught to hear by read- 

 ing, and to speak by writing; writing was associated 

 with speech, and speech with thought, but written char- 

 acters and ideas might be connected without the inter- 

 vention of sounds. 1 This view, put forward with all the 

 authority of Cardan's name, would certainly rouse fresh 

 interest in the question, and, whether stimulated by his 

 words or not, an attempt to teach deaf mutes was made 

 by Pedro de Ponce, a Spanish Dominican, about 1560. 

 But it would not be permissible to claim for Cardan any 

 share in the epoch-making discoveries in Medicine. 

 Galen as an experimental physiologist had brought 

 diagnosis to a level unattained before. His methods 

 had been abandoned by his successors, and practice had 

 in consequence suffered deterioration, but Cardan, study- 

 ing under the revived Galenism, called into life by 

 the teaching of Vesalius, went to deal with his cures 

 under conditions more favourable than those offered by 

 any previous period of the world's history. His cure of 

 Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, over which Cassanate 

 and the other doctors had failed, was due to a more 

 careful diagnosis and a more judicious application of 

 existing rules, rather than to the working of any new 

 discoveries of his own. Viewed as a soldier in the service 

 of Hygeia, how transient and slender is the fame of 

 Cardan compared with that of Linacre, Vesalius, or 

 1 Opera^ torn. x. p. 462. 



