Jerome Cardan Part 13

Cardan lived an abstemious life. He broke his fast on bread-and-water and a few grapes. He sometimes dined off bread, the yolk of an egg, and a little wine, and would take for supper a mess of beetroot and rice and a chicory salad. The catalogue of his favourite dishes seems to exhaust every known edible, and it will suffice to remark that he was specially inclined to sound and well-stewed wild boar, the wings of young c.o.c.kerels and the livers of pullets, oysters, mussels, fresh-water crayfish because his mother ate greedily thereof when she was pregnant with him; but of all dishes he rates the best a carp from three pounds weight to seven, taken from a good feeding-ground. He praises all sweet fruit, oil, olives, and finds in rue an antidote to poison. Ten o'clock was his hour for going to bed, and he allowed himself eight hours' sleep. When wakeful he would walk about the room and repeat the multiplication table. As a further remedy for sleeplessness he would reduce his food by half, and would anoint his thighs, the soles of his feet, the neck, the elbows, the carpal bones, the temples, the jugulars, the region of the heart and of the liver, and the upper lip with ointment of poplars, or the fat of bear, or the oil of water-lilies.

These few extracts will show that an intelligible narrative could scarcely be produced by the methods Cardan used. The book is a collection of facts, cla.s.sified as a scientific writer would arrange the sections and subsections of his subject. In gathering together and grouping the leading points of his life, a method somewhat similar to his own will suffice, but there will be no need to descend to a subdivision so minute as his own. A task of this sort is never an easy one, and in this instance the difficulties are increased by the diffuse and complicated nature of the subject matter; and because, owing to Cardan's wayward mental habit, there is no saying in what corner of the ten large folios which contain his writings some pregnant and characteristic sentence, picturing effectively some aspect of his nature or perhaps exhibiting the man at a glance, may not be hidden away.

It must not be inferred, because Cardan himself and his critics after him, have laid such great stress upon his vices and imperfections, that he was devoid of virtues. The most striking and remarkable of his merits was his industry, but even in this particular instance, where his excellence is most clearly manifest, he is constantly lamenting his waste of time and idleness. Again and again he mourns over the precious hours he has spent over chess and dice and games of chance. In his counsels to his children, he compares a gambler to a sink of all the vices, and in writing of his early life at Sacco he describes himself as an idle profligate, and tells how he entirely neglected his profession. If indeed such monstrous cantles were cut out of his time through idleness he must, though his life proved a long one, have possessed extraordinary power of rapid production; for the huge ma.s.s of his published work, without taking any account of the many ma.n.u.scripts he burned from time to time, would, in the case of most men, represent the ceaseless labour of a long life. And the _corpus_ is not great by reason of haste or want of finish. He has recorded more than once how it was ever his habit to let his work be polished to the utmost before putting it in type. The citations with which his pages bristle proclaim him to be a reader almost as voracious and catholic as Burton; and Naude, with the watchfulness of the hostile critic in his heart and the bookworm's knowledge in his brain, would have been ready and able to convict him of quoting authors he had not read, if the least handle for this charge should have been given, but no accusation of the kind is preferred. The story of his life shows him to be full of rough candour and honesty, and unlikely to descend to subterfuge, while his great love of reading and his accurate retentive memory would make easy for him a task which ordinary mortals might well regard as hopeless.

Those critics who pa.s.s judgment on Cardan, taken solely as a Physician or as a Mathematician, will give a presentment more fallacious than imperfect generalizations usually furnish, for in Cardan's case the man, taken as a whole, was incomparably greater than the sum of his parts. Naude remarks that a man who knows a little of everything, and that little imperfectly, deserves small respect as a citizen of the republic of letters, but Cardan did not belong to this category, as Julius Caesar Scaliger found to his cost. He was not like the bookmen of the revival of learning--Poliziano, Valla, or Alberti may stand as examples--who after putting on the armour of the learned language and saturating themselves with the _literae humaniores_, made excursions into some domain of science for the sake of recreation. Cardan might rather be compared with Varro or Theophrastus in cla.s.sic, and with Erasmus, Pico, Grotius, or Casaubon in modern times. On this point Naude indulges in something approaching panegyric. He writes--"Investigation will show us that many excelled him in the humanities or in Theology, some even in Mathematics, some in Medicine and in the knowledge of Philosophy, some in Oriental tongues and in either side of Jurisprudence, but where shall we find any one who had mastered so many sciences by himself, who had plumbed so deeply the abysses of learning and had written such ample commentaries on the subjects he studied? a.s.suredly in Philosophy, in Metaphysics, in History, in Politics, in Morals, as well as in the more abstruse fields of learning, nothing that was worth consideration escaped his notice."

The foregoing eulogy from the pen of an adverse critic gives eloquent testimony to Cardan's industry and the catholicity of his knowledge. As to his industry, the record of his literary production, chronicled incidentally in the course of the preceding pages, will be evidence enough, seeing that, from the time when he "commenced author," scarcely a year went by when he did not print a volume of some sort or other; to say nothing of the production of those mult.i.tudinous unpublished MSS., of which some went to build up the pile he burnt in his latter years in Rome, while others, perhaps, are still mouldering in the presses of university or city libraries of Italy. Frequent reference has been made to the more noteworthy of his works. Books like the _De Vita Propria_, the _De Libris Propriis_, the _De Utilitate ex Adversis Capienda_, the _Geniturarum Exempla_, the _Theonoston_, the _Consilia Medica_, the dialogues _Tetim_ and _De Morte_, have necessarily been drawn upon for biographical facts.

The _De Subtilitate_ and the _De Varietate Rerum_; the _Liber Artis Magnae_, the _Practica Arithmeticae_, have been noticed as the most enduring portions of his legacy to posterity; wherefore, before saying the final word as to his literary achievement, it may not be superfluous to give a brief glance at those of his books which, although of minor importance to those already cited, engaged considerable attention in the lifetime of the writer.

The work upon which Cardan founded his chief hope of immortality was his _Commentary on Hippocrates_. In bulk it ranks first easily, filling as it does one of the large folios of the edition of 1663. Curiously enough, in addition to a permanent place in the annals of medicine, Cardan antic.i.p.ated for this forgotten ma.s.s of type a general and immediate popularity; wider than any which his technical works could possibly enjoy, seeing that it dealt with the preservation of health, the greatest mortal blessing, and must on this account be of interest to all men. It will be enough to remark of these commentaries that no portion of Cardan's work yields less information as to the author's life and personality; to dilate upon them, ever so superficially, from a scientific point of view, would be waste of time and paper. Another of his works, which he rated highly, was his treatise on Music. It was begun during his tenure of office at Pavia, _circa_ 1547, and he was still at work upon it two years before his death.[250] It is not difficult to realize, even at this interval of time, that this book at the date of its publication must have been welcomed by all musical students as a valuable contribution to the literature of their subject. It is strongly marked by Cardan's particular touch, that formative faculty by which he almost always succeeded in stimulating fresh interest in the reader, and exhibiting fresh aspects of whatever subject he might be treating. This work begins by laying down at length the general rules and principles of the art, and then goes on to treat of ancient music in all its forms; of music as Cardan knew and enjoyed it; of the system of counterpoint and composition, and of the construction of musical instruments.

The Commentary on _Ptolemaei de Astrorum Judiciis_, the writing of which beguiled the tedium of his voyage down the Loire on his journey to Paris in 1552, is a book upon which he spent great care, and is certainly worthy of notice. Cardan's grat.i.tude to Archbishop Hamilton for the liberal treatment and gracious reception he had recently encountered in Scotland, prompted him to dedicate this volume to his late patient. He writes in the preface how he had expected to find the Scots a pack of barbarians, but their country, he affirms, is cultivated and humanized beyond belief,--"and you yourself reflect such splendour upon your nation that now, by the very l.u.s.tre of your name, it must needs appear to the world more n.o.ble and ill.u.s.trious than at any time heretofore. What need is there for me to speak of the school founded by you at St. Andrews, of sedition quelled, of your country delivered, of the authority of your brother the Regent vindicated? These are merely the indications of your power, and not the source thereof." In the preface he also writes at length, concerning the horoscope of Christ,[251] in a strain of apology, as if he scented already the scandal which the publication of this injudicious performance was destined to raise. In estimating the influence of comets he sets down several instances which had evidently been brought to his notice during his sojourn in Scotland: how in 1165, within fourteen days of the appearance of a great comet, Malcolm IV., known on account of his continence as the virgin king, fell sick and died. Again, in 1214 two comets, one preceding and the other following the sun, appeared as fore-runners of the death of King William after a reign of forty-nine years. Perhaps the most interesting of his comments on Ptolemy's text are those which estimate the power of the stellar influences on the human frame, an aspect of the question which, by reason of his knowledge of medicine and surgery, would naturally engage his more serious attention.

He tells of the birth of a monstrous child--a most loathsome malformation--at Middleton Stoney, near Oxford, during his stay in England,[252] and gives many other instances of the disastrous effects of untoward conjunction of the planets upon infants born under the influence of the same. He accuses monks and nuns of detestable vices in the plainest words, words which were probably read by the emissaries of the spiritual authority when the charge of impiety was being got up against him. In the _Geniturarum Exempla_ the horoscopes of Edward VI., Archbishop Hamilton, and Cardan himself have been already noticed; that of Sir John Cheke comes next in interest to these, and, it must be admitted, is no more trustworthy. It declares that Cheke would attain the age of sixty-one years, that he would be most fortunate in gathering wealth and friends around him, that he would die finally of lingering disease, and involve many in misfortune by his death--a faulty guess, indeed, as to the future of a man who died at forty-three, borne down by the weight of his misfortunes, neglected and forgotten by his former adherents, stripped of his wealth and covered with shame, in that he had abjured his faith to save a life which was so little worth preserving.

Naude does not neglect to censure Cardan for his maladroit attempts to read the future. He writes:--"This matter, forsooth, gave a ready handle to Cardan's rivals, and especially to those who were sworn foes of astrology; so that they were able to jibe at him freely because, neither in his own horoscope, nor in that of his son Giovanni Battista, nor in that of Aymer Ranconet, nor in that of Edward VI., king of England, nor in any other of the schemes that he drew, did he rightly foresee any of the events which followed. He did not divine that he himself was doomed to imprisonment, his son to the halter, Ranconet to a violent death, and Edward to a brief term of life, but predicted for each one of these some future directly contrary."[253]

The treatise _De Consolatione_, probably the best known of Cardan's ethical works, was first published at Venice in 1542 by Girolamo Scoto, but it failed at first to please the public taste. It was not until 1544, when it was re-issued bound up with the _De Sapientia_ and the first version of the _De Libris Propriis_ from the press of Petreius at Nuremberg, that it met with any success. Perhaps the sober tone and didactic method of this treatise appealed more readily to the mood of the German than of the Italian reader. From internal evidence it is obvious that Cardan was urged to write it by the desire of making known to the world the bitter experience of his early literary and professional struggles. In the opening paragraph he lets it be seen that he intends to follow a Ciceronian model, and records his regret that the lament of Cicero over his daughter's death should have perished in the barbarian wars. The original t.i.tle of the book was _The Accuser_, to wit, something which might censure the vain pa.s.sions and erring tendencies of mankind, "at post mutato nomine, et in tres libellos diviso, de Consolatione eum inscripsimus, quod longe magis infelices consolatione, quam fortunati reprehensione, indigere viderentur." The subsequent success of the book was probably due to this change of name, though the author himself preferred to have discovered a special reason for its early failure.[254]

The plan of the treatise is the same as that of a dozen others of the same nature: an effort to persuade men in evil case that they may find relief by regarding the misfortunes they suffer as transitory accidents in no way affecting the chief end of life, and by seeking happiness alone in trafficking with the riches of the mind.

It is doubtful whether any of the books written with this object have ever served their purpose, save in the case of their originators. Cardan may have found the burden of his failure and poverty grow lighter as he set down his woes on paper, but the rest of the world must have read the book for some other reason than the hope of consolation. Read to-day in Bedingfield's quaint English, the book is full of charm and interest. It is filled with apt ill.u.s.tration from Greek philosophy and from Holy Writ as well, and lighted up by s.p.a.ces of lively wit. It was accepted by the public taste for reasons akin to those which would secure popularity for a clever volume of essays at the present time, and was translated into more than one foreign language, Bedingfield's translation being published some thirty years after its first appearance.

The _De Sapientia_, with which it is generally cla.s.sed, is of far less interest. It is a series of ethical discourses, lengthy and discursive, which must have seemed dull enough to contemporary students: to read it through now would be a task almost impossible. It is only remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, somewhat incongruously, that account of his a.s.serted cures of phthisis which Ca.s.sanate quoted when he wrote to Cardan about Archbishop Hamilton's asthma, and which were afterwards seized upon by hostile critics as evidence of his disregard of truth.

Another of his minor works highly characteristic of the author is the _Somniorum Synesiorum_, a collection of all the remarkable dreams he ever dreamt, many of which have been already noticed. To judge from what specimens of his epistles are extant, Cardan seems to have been a good letter-writer. One of the most noteworthy is that which he addressed to Gian Battista after his marriage. It shows Cardan to have been a loving father and a master of sapient exhortation, while the son's fate gives melancholy testimony of the futility of good counsel unaided by direction and example. He tells of his grief at seeing the evil case into which his son had fallen, vexed by poverty, disgrace, and loss of health, how he would gladly even now receive the prodigal into his house (he says nothing about the wife), did he not fear that such a step would lead to his own ruin rather than to his son's restoration. After showing that any fresh misfortune to himself must needs cut away the last hope for Gian Battista, he sketches out a line of conduct for the ill-starred youth which he declared, if rightly pursued, might re-establish his fortunes.

He begins by advising his son to read and lay to heart the contents of the _De Consolatione_ and the _De Utilitate_, and then, somewhat more to the purpose, promises him half his earnings of the present and the coming year. Beyond this Gian Battista should have half the salary of any office which his father might get for himself, and half of the piece of silk which he had received from the Venetian Amba.s.sador, supposing that the young man should not be able to get a like piece for himself from the same source.

He next cites the _De Consolatione_ to demonstrate the futility of lamentation over misfortune past or present, or indeed over any decree of fate. He bids Gian Battista reflect that he is human not a brute, a man not a woman, a Christian not a Moslem or Jew, an Italian not a barbarian, sprung from a worthy city and family, and from a father whose name by itself will prove a t.i.tle to fame. His only real troubles are a weak body and infirm health--one a gift of heredity, the other aggravated by dissolute habits. It may be a vain thing for men to congratulate themselves over their happiness, but it is vainer for them to cry out for solace over past calamity. Contempt of money is foolish, but contempt of G.o.d is ten times worse. Cardan concludes this part of his letter by reciting two maxims given him by his father--one, to have daily remembrance of G.o.d and of His vast bounty, the other, to pursue with the utmost diligence any task taken in hand.

Cardan then treats the scapegrace to a string of maxims from the _De Utilitate_, maxims which a model son might have read, but which Gian Battista would certainly put aside unnoticed, and finishes with some serviceable practical counsel: "Keep your mind calm, go early to bed, for ours is a hot-blooded race and predisposed to suffer from stone. Take nine hours' sleep, rise at six and visit your patients, being careful to use no speech unconnected with the case before you. Avoid heating your body to perspiration; go forth on horseback, come back on foot; and on your return put on warm clothes. Drink little, break your fast on bread, dried fish, and meat, and then give four hours to study, for studies bring pleasure, relief from care, and mental riches; they are the foundations of renown, and enable a man to do his duty with credit. See your patients again; and, before you sup, take exercise in the woods and fields adjacent. Should you become over-heated or wet with rain, cast off and dry your damp clothes, and don dry ones. Sup heartily, and go to bed at eight; and when, by the brevity of the night, this is not convenient, take a corresponding rest during the day. Abstain from summer fruit, from black wine, from vain overflow of talk, from falsehood and gaming, from trusting a woman or over-indulging her, for she is a foolish animal and full of deceit.

Over-fondness towards a woman will surely bring evil upon you. Bleed and purge yourself as little as possible; learn by experience of other men's faults and misfortunes; live frugally; bear yourself suavely to all men; and let study be your main end. All this and more have I set forth in the books I have named. Trust neither promises nor hopes, for these may be vain and delusive; and reckon your own only that which you hold in your hand. Farewell."

From the fact that Cardan took part in an unofficial medical conference in Paris, that he afterwards superseded Ca.s.sanate as the Archbishop of St.

Andrews' physician, and did not find himself with a dozen or so quarrels on his hands, it may be a.s.sumed that he was laudably free from the jealousy attributed by tradition to his profession. This instance becomes all the more noteworthy when his natural irascibility, and the character of the learned controversy of the times comes to be considered. He does not spare his censure in remarking on the too frequent quarrels of men of letters,[255] albeit these quarrels must have lent no little gaiety to the literary world. No one who reads the account of Gian Battista's fate can doubt the sincerity of Cardan's remorse for that neglect of the boy's youthful training which helped to bring him to ruin, and the care which he bestowed upon his grandson Fazio proved that his regret was not of that sort which exhales itself in empty words. The zeal with which he threw himself into the struggle for his son's life, and his readiness to strip himself of his last coin as the fight went on, show that he was capable of warm-hearted affection, and afraid of no sacrifice in the cause of duty.

The brutal candour which Cardan used in probing the weaknesses of his own nature and in displaying them to the world, he used likewise in his dealings with others. If he detected Branda Porro or Camutio in a blunder he would inform them they were blockheads without hesitation, and plume himself afterwards on the score of his blunt honesty. Veracity was not a common virtue in those days, but Cardan laid claim to it with a display of insistence which was not, perhaps, in the best taste. Over and over again he writes that he never told a lie;[256] a contention which seems to have roused especially the bile of Naude, and to have spurred him on to make his somewhat clumsy a.s.sault on Cardan's veracity.[257] His citation of the case of the stranger who came with the volume of Apuleius for sale, and of the miraculous gift of cla.s.sic tongues, has already been referred to; but these may surely be attributed to an exaggerated activity of that particular side of Cardan's imagination which was specially p.r.o.ne to seize upon some figment of the brain, and some imperfectly apprehended sensation of the optic nerve, and fashion from these materials a tale of marvel. Delusions of this sort were common in reputed witches, as Reginald Scot writes--"They learne strange toongs with small industrie (as Aristotle and others affirme)."[258] The other charge preferred by Naude as to the pretended cure of consumption, and the consequent quibbling and tergiversation, is a more valid one. It has been noted how Cardan, previous to his journey to Scotland, had posed as the discoverer of a cure for this malady. In the list of his cures successfully treated he includes several in which he restored patients suffering from blood-spitting, fever, and extreme emaciation to sound health, the most noteworthy of these being that of Girolamo Tiboldo, a sea-captain. When the sick man had risen from his bed and had become fat and healthy, Cardan deemed that the occasion justified a certain amount of self-gratulation, but the physicians, out of envy, declared that Tiboldo had never suffered from true phthisis. In his account of the case Cardan says that he, and the physicians as well, were indeed untruthful over the matter, his own falsehood having been the result of over-sanguine hope, and theirs the outcome of spiteful envy. Tiboldo died after all of chest disease, but not till five years later, and then from a chill caught through sitting in wet garments.[259] The term consumption has always been applied somewhat loosely, and Cardan probably would have been allowed the benefit of this usage if he had not, in an excess of candour, set down the workings of his mind and conscience with regard to this matter. Writing of his treatment of Archbishop Hamilton, he says: "And in truth I cured scarcely any patients of phthisic disease, though I did find a remedy for many who were suffering from similar maladies, wherefore that boast of mine, that proclamation of merit to which I had no right, worked no small profit to me, a man very little given to lying. For the people about the Archbishop, urged on by these and other considerations, persuaded him that he had no chance of regaining his health except by putting himself under my care, and that he should fly to me as his last hope."[260] It has already been noted that Cardan's claim to some past knowledge in the successful treatment of chest diseases had weight with the Archbishop and Ca.s.sanate, and the result of his visit surely proved that their confidence was not ill-placed; his boasting may have been a trifle excessive, but it was based on hope rather than achievement; and if proof can be adduced that it was not prompted by any greed of illegitimate fame or profit, it may justly be ranked as a weakness rather than as a serious offence. To these two instances of falsehood Naude adds a third, to wit, Cardan's claim to the guidance of a familiar spirit. He refuses to let this rank as a delusion; and, urged no doubt by righteous indignation against the ills springing from kindred superst.i.tions, he writes down as a liar rather than a dupe the man who, after mastering the whole world of science, could profess such folly.

Considering the catholicity of Cardan's achievements, and the eager spirit of inquiry he displayed in fields of learning remote from his own particular one, it is worthy of notice that he did not allow this discursive humour, which is not seldom a token of instability, to hold him back from pursuing the supreme aim of his life, that is, eminence in the art of Medicine. In his youth the threats and persuasions of his father could not induce him to take up Jurisprudence with an a.s.sured income and abandon Medicine. At Sacco, at Gallarate, and afterwards in Milan he was forced by the necessity of bread-winning to use his pen in all sorts of minor subjects that had no real fascination for him, but all his leisure was devoted to the acquisition of Medical knowledge. Prudence as well as inclination had a share in directing his energies into this channel, for a report, for which no doubt there was some warrant, was spread abroad that what skill he had lay entirely in the knowledge of Astrology; and, as this rumour operated greatly to his prejudice,[261] he resolved to perfect himself in Medicine and free his reputation from this aspersion. He had quarrelled violently with the physicians over the case of Count Borromeo's child which died, and with Borromeo himself, and, almost immediately after this, he published his book, _De Astrorum Judiciis_, a step which tended to identify him yet more closely with Astrology, and to raise a cry against him in Milan, which he declares to be the most scandal-mongering city in the Universe. But it is clear that in this instance scandal was not far wrong, and that Cardan himself was right in purging himself of the quasi science he ought never to have taken up.

Medicine, when Cardan began his studies, was beginning to feel the effects of the revival of Greek learning. With the restored knowledge of the language of Greece there arose a desire to investigate the storehouses of science, as well as those of literature, and the extravagant a.s.sumption of the dogmatists, and the eccentricities of the Arabic school gave additional cogency to the cry for more light. The sects which Galen had endeavoured to unite sprang into new activity within a century after his death. The Arabian physicians, acute and curious as they were, had exercised but a very transient influence upon the real progress of the art, the chief cause of their non-success being their adhesion to arbitrary and empirical tradition. At the end of the fifteenth century, Leonicinus, a professor at Ferrara, recalled the allegiance of his pupils to the authority of Hippocrates by the ability and eloquence of his teaching; and, by his translation of Galen's works into Latin, he helped still farther to confirm the ascendency of the fathers of Medicine. The Arabians, sprung from the East, the storehouse of drugs and simples, and skilled in Chemistry, were the founders of the Pharmacopoeia,[262] but with this exception they did nothing to advance Medicine beyond the point where the Greeks had left it. The treatises of Haly, Avicenna, and Maimonides were little better than faint transcriptions of the writings of the great forerunners. Their teaching was random and spasmodic, whereas the system of Hippocrates was conceived in the spirit of Greek philosophy, moving on by select experience, always observant and cautious, and ascending by slow and certain steps to the generalities of Theory. Indeed the science of Medicine in the hands of Hippocrates and his school seems, more than any other, to have presented to the world a rudimentary essay, a faint foreshadowing of the great fabric of inductive process, subsequently formulated by the genius of Bacon. At various epochs 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,[263] 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 overflowing, 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 att.i.tude 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, disfigured 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 a.s.sailed 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 Hippocrates 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 sounded. Then, when Anatomy sprang to the front as the potent ally of Medicine, the science of healing entered upon a fresh stage, but this new force did not make itself felt soon enough to seduce Cardan from the altars of the ancients to the worship of new G.o.ds. As long as he lived he was a follower of the great masters, though at the same time his admiration of the teaching of Vesalius was enthusiastic and profound. His love of truth and sound learning forbade him to give unreflecting adhesion to the precepts of any man, however eminent, and when he found that Galen was a careless commentator on Hippocrates,[264] and failed to elucidate the difficulties with which he professed to deal, he did not spare his censure.[265] In the _De Subtilitate_ he speaks of him as "Verbosus et studio contradicendi taedulus ut alterum vix ferre queas, in reliquo gravis jactura artium posita sit, quam nostrae aetatis viri rest.i.tuere conati sunt."[266] But as Galen's name is quoted as an authority on almost every page of the _Consilia Medica_, it may be a.s.sumed that Cardan's faith in his primary theories was unshaken. In his Commentaries on Hippocrates, Galen professes a profound respect for his master, but the two great men must be regarded as the leaders of rival schools; indeed it could hardly be otherwise, seeing how vast was the ma.s.s of knowledge which Galen added to the art during his lifetime.

Hippocrates, by denying the supernatural origin of disease, by his method of diagnosis, by the importance he attached to air and diet, by his discriminating use of drugs, and by the simplicity of his system generally, had placed Medicine on a rational basis. In the six hundred years' s.p.a.ce which elapsed before the appearance of Galen, Medicine was broken up into many rival schools. The Dogmatici and the Empirici for many years wrangled undisturbed, but shortly after the Christian era the Methodici entered the field, to be followed later on by the Eclectici and a troop of other sects, whose wranglings, and whose very names, are now forgotten. In his _History of Medicine_, Dr. Bostock gives a sketch of the att.i.tude of Galen towards the rival schools. "In his general principles he may be considered as belonging to the Dogmatic sect, for his method was to reduce all his knowledge, as acquired by the observation of facts, to general theoretical principles. These principles he indeed professed to deduce from experience and observation,[267] and we have abundant proofs of his diligence in collecting experience and his accuracy in making observations; but still, in a certain sense at least, he regards individual facts and the details of experience as of little value, unconnected with the principles which he laid down as the basis of all medical reasoning. In this fundamental point, therefore, the method pursued by Galen appears to have been directly the reverse of that which we now consider as the correct method of scientific investigation; and yet, such is the force of actual genius, that in most instances he attained the ultimate object in view, although by an indirect path. He was an admirer of Hippocrates, and always speaks of him with the most profound respect, professing to act upon his principles, and to do little more than expound his doctrines and support them by new facts and observations.

Yet in reality we have few writers whose works, both as to substance and manner, are more different from each other than those of Hippocrates and Galen, the simplicity of the former being strongly contrasted with the abstruseness and refinement of the latter."

The antagonism between these two great men was not perhaps more marked than might have been expected, considering that an interval of six hundred years lay between them. However loyal he may have been to his master, Galen, with his keen, catholic, and subtle intellect, was bound to fall under the sway of Alexandrian influence while he studied in Alexandria as the pupil of Heraclia.n.u.s. The methods of the contemporary school of philosophy fascinated him; and, in his endeavour to bring Medicine out of the chaotic welter in which he found it, he attempted--unhappily for the future of science--to use the hyper-idealistic Platonism then dominant in Alexandria, rather than the gradual and orderly induction of Hippocrates, as a bond of union between professional and scientific medicine; a false step for which not even his great services to anatomy and physiology can altogether atone. Yet most likely it was this same error, an error which practically led to the enslavement of Medicine till the seventeenth century, which caused Cardan to regard him, and not Hippocrates, as his master. The vastness and catholicity of Galen's scheme of Medicine must have been peculiarly attractive to a man of Cardan's temper; and that Galen attempted to reconcile the incongruous in the teleological system which he devised, would not have been rated as a fault by his Milanese disciple.

Galen taught as a cardinal truth the doctrine of the 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 completely 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 antic.i.p.ated, 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 ma.s.s of his work, now shut in dusty folios which stand undisturbed 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 nothing 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, 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 reading, and to speak by writing; writing was a.s.sociated with speech, and speech with thought, but written characters and ideas might be connected without the intervention of sounds.[268] 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, studying 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 Ca.s.sanate 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 Harvey! Were his claims to immortality to rest entirely on his contribution to Medicine, his name would have gone down to oblivion along with that of Cavenago, Camutio, Della Croce, and the mult.i.tude of jealous rivals who, according to his account, were ever plotting his downfall. But it was rescued from this fate by his excellence as a mathematician, by the interest clinging to his personality, by the enormous range of his learning, by his picturesque reputation as a dreamer of dreams, and a searcher into the secrets of the hidden world. In an age when books were few and ill-composed, his works became widely popular; because, although he dealt with abstruse subjects, he wrote--as even Naude admits--in a pa.s.sably good style, and handled his subject with a lightness of touch which was then very rare. This was the reason why men went on reading him long after his works had ceased to have any scientific value; which induced writers like Burton and Sir Thomas Browne to embroider their pages freely with quotations from his works, and thus make his name familiar to many who have never handled a single one of his volumes.

It is somewhat strange to find running through the complex web of Cardan's character a well-defined thread of worldly wisdom and common-sense; to find that a man, described by almost every one who has dealt with his character as a credulous simpleton, one with disordered wits, or a down-right madman, should, when occasion demanded, prove himself to be a sharp man of business. When Fazio died he left his son with a number of unsettled law-suits on hand, concerning which he writes: "From my father's death until I was forty-six, that is to say for a s.p.a.ce of twenty-three years, I was almost continually involved in law-suits. First with Alessandro Castillione, surnamed Gatico, with respect to certain plantations, and afterwards with his kinsfolk. Next with the Counts of Barbiani, next with the college, next with the heirs of Dominico de Tortis, who had held me in his arms when I was baptized. Out of all these suits I came victorious. It was indeed a matter for surprise that I should have got the better of Alessandro Castillione, seeing that his uncle sat as judge. Moreover, he had already got a decision against me, a decision which, as the jurisconsults declared, helped my case as the trial went on, and I was able to force him to pay me all the money which was in dispute.

A like good fortune attended me while my claims were considered by the heads of the Milanese College, and finally rejected by several votes. Then afterwards, when they had decided to admit me, and when they tried to subject me to certain rules which placed me on a footing inferior to their own, I compelled them to grant me full membership. In the case of the Barbiani, after long litigation and many angry words and much trouble, I came to terms with them; and, having received the sum of money covenanted by agreement, I was entirely freed from vexation of the law."[269] Writing generally of his monetary dealings, Cardan says: "Whenever I may have incurred a loss, I have never been content merely to retrieve the same, I have always contrived to seize upon something extra."[270] Or again: "If at any time I have lost twenty crowns, I have never rested until I have succeeded in getting back these and twenty more in addition."[271]

Cardan left in his _Dicta Familiaria_ and _Praeceptorum ad filios Libellus_ a long list of aphorisms and counsels, many of which give evidence of keen insight and busy observation of mankind, while some are distinguished by a touch of humour rare in his other writings. He bids his children to be careful how they offend princes, and, offence being given, never to flatter themselves that it has been pardoned; to live joyfully as long as they can, for men are for the most part worn out by care; never to take a wife from a witless stock or one tainted with hereditary disease; to refrain from deliberating when the mind is disturbed; to learn how to be worsted and suffer loss; and to trust a school-master to teach children, but not to feed them. One of the dicta is a gem of quaint wisdom. "Before you begin to wash your face, see that you have a towel handy to dry the same." If all the instances of prodigies, portents, visions, and mysterious warnings which Cardan has left on record were set down in order, a perusal of this catalogue would justify, if it did not compel, the belief that he was little better than a credulous fool, and raise doubts whether such a man could have written such orderly and coherent works as the treatise on Arithmetic, or the book of the Great Art. But Cardan was beyond all else a man of moods, and it would be unfair to figure as his normal mental condition those periods of overwrought nervousness and the hallucinations they brought with them. In his old age the nearness of the inevitable stroke, and the severance of all earthly ties, led him to discipline his mind into a calmer mood, but early and late during his season of work his nature was singularly sensitive to the wearing a.s.saults of cares and calamities. In crises of this kind his mind would be brought into so morbid a condition, that it would fall entirely under the sway of any single idea then dominant; such idea would master him entirely, or even haunt him like one of those unclean spectres he describes with such gusto in the _De Varietate_. What he may have uttered when these moods were upon him must not be taken seriously; these are the moments to which the major part of his experiences of things _supra naturam_ may be referred. But there are numerous instances in which he describes marvellous phenomena with philosophic calm, and examines them in the true spirit of scepticism. In his account of the trembling of the bed on which he lay the night before he heard of Gian Battista's marriage, he goes on to say that a few nights after the first manifestation, he was once more conscious of a strange movement; and, having put his hand to his breast, found that his heart was palpitating violently because he had been lying on his left side. Then he remembered that a similar physical trouble had accompanied the first trembling of the bed, and admits that this manifestation may be referred to a natural cause, _i.e._ the palpitation.

He tells also how he found amongst his father's papers a record of a cure of the gout by a prayer offered to the Virgin at eight in the morning on the first of April, and how he duly put up the prayer and was cured of the gout, but he adds: "Sed in hoc, auxiliis etiam artis usus sum."[272] Again with regard to the episode of the ignition of his bed twice in the same night, without visible cause, he says that this portent may have come about by some supernatural working; but that, on the other hand, it may have been the result of mere chance. He tells another story of an experience which befell him when he was in Belgium.[273] He was aroused early in the morning by the noise made outside his door by a dog catching fleas. Having got out of bed to see to this, he heard the sound as of a key being softly put into the lock. He told this fact to the servants, who at once took up the tale, and persuaded themselves that they had heard many noises of the same kind, and others vastly more wonderful; in short, the whole house was swarming with apparitions. The next night the noise was repeated, and a second observation laid bare the real cause thereof.

The scratching of the dog had caused the bolt to fall into the socket, and this produced the noise which had disquieted him. He writes in conclusion: "Thus many events which seem to defy all explanation have really come to pa.s.s by accident, or in the course of nature. Out of such manifestations as these the unlettered, the superst.i.tious, the timorous, and the over-hasty make for themselves miracles."[274] Again, after telling a strange story of a boy who beheld the image of a thief in the neck of a phial, and of some incantations of Josephus Niger, he concludes: "Nevertheless I am of opinion that all these things were fables, and that no one could have had any real knowledge thereof, seeing that they were nothing else than vain triflings."[275]

In a nature so complex and many-sided as Cardan's, strange resemblances may be sought for and discovered, and it certainly is an unexpected revelation to find a mental att.i.tude common to Cardan, a man tied and bound by authority and the traditions of antiquity, and such a daring a.s.sailant of the schools and of Aristotle as Doctor Joseph Glanvil. The conclusions of Cardan as to certain obscure phenomena recently cited show that, in matters lying beyond sensual cognition, he kept an open mind. In summing up the case of the woman said to have been cured by the incantations of Josephus Niger, he says that she must have been cured either by the power of the imagination, or by the agency of the demons.

Here he antic.i.p.ates the arguments which Glanvil sets forth in _Sadducismus Triumphatus_. Writing on the belief in witchcraft Glanvil says, "We have the attestation of thousands of eye and ear witnesses, and these not of the easily-deceivable vulgar only, but of wise and grave discerners; and that when no interest could oblige them to agree together in a common Lye.

I say, we have the light of all these circ.u.mstances to confirm us in the belief of things done by persons of despicable power and knowledge, beyond the reach of Art and ordinary Nature. Standing public Records have been kept of these well-attested Relations, and Epochas made of those unwonted events. Laws in many Nations have been enacted against those vile practices; those amongst the Jews and our own are notorious; such cases have often been determined near us by wise and reverend Judges, upon clear and convictive Evidence; and thousands of our own Nation have suffered death for their vile compacts with Apostate spirits. All these I might largely prove in their particular instances, but that 'tis not needful since these did deny the being of Witches, so it was not out of ignorance of these heads of Argument, of which probably they have heard a thousand times; but from an apprehension that such a belief is absurd, and the things impossible. And upon these presumptions they condemn all demonstrations of this nature, and are hardened against conviction. And I think those that can believe all Histories and Romances; That all the wiser would have agreed together to juggle mankind into a common belief of ungrounded fables, that the sound senses of mult.i.tudes together may deceive them, and Laws are built upon Chimeras; That the greatest and wisest Judges have been Murderers, and the sagest persons Fools, or designing Impostors; I say those that can believe this heap of absurdities, are either more credulous than those whose credulity they reprehend; or else have some extraordinary evidence of their perswasion, viz.: That it is absurd and impossible that there should be a Witch or Apparition."[276] Cardan's argument in the case of the sick woman, that it would be difficult if not impossible to invent cause for her cure, other than the power of imagination or Demoniac agency, if less emphatic and lengthy than Glanvil's, certainly runs upon parallel lines therewith, and suggests, if it does not proclaim, the existence of such a thing as the credulity of unbelief; in other words that those who were disposed to brush aside the alternative causes of the cure as set down by him, and search for others, and put faith in them, would be fully as credulous as those who held the belief which he recorded as his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[248] _De Varietate_, p. 314.

[249] _De Vita Propria_, ch. x.x.xvii. p. 115.

[250] "Musicam, sed hanc anno post VI. scilicet MDLXXIV. correxi et transcribi curavi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. p. 176.

[251] This is on p. 164.

[252] Page 266.

[253] _Judicium de Cardano_.

[254] Page 57.

[255] "Ita nostra aetate, lapsi sunt clarissimi alioqui viri in hoc genere.

Budaeus adversus Erasmum, Fuchsius adversus Cornarium, Silvius adversus Vesalium, Nizolius adversus Maioragium: non tam credo justis contentionum causis, quam vanitate quadam et spe augendae opinionis in hominibus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 135.

[256] He writes in this strain in _De Vita Propria_, ch. xiv. p. 49, in _De Varietate Rerum_, p. 626, and in _Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 431.

[257] On the subject of dissimulation Cardan writes: "a.s.suevi vultum in contrarium semper efformare; ideo simulare possum, dissimulare nescio."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xiii. p. 42. Again in _Libellus Praeceptorum ad filios_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 481), "Nolite unquam mentiri, sed circ.u.mvenire [circ.u.mvenite?]."

[258] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, ch. xi.

[259] Donato Lanza, the druggist, who had been his first introducer to Sfondrato, was equally perverse. After Cardan had cured him of phthisis, he jumped out of a window to avoid arrest, and fell into a fish-pond, and died of the cold he took.--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 83.

[260] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 136.

[261] _De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 32.