harge during Cassanate's absence--and this man
retaliated upon Cardan for having thus stirred up strife. Cardan's
position was certainly a very uneasy one. The other physicians were full
of jealousy and malice, and the Archbishop began to accuse him of dilatory
conduct of the case, redoubling his complaints as soon as he found himself
getting better under the altered treatment. So weary did Cardan become of
this bickering that he begged leave to depart at once, but this
proposition the Primate took in very ill part.

Cassanate in his first diagnosis had traced the Archbishop's illness to an
excess of coldness and humidity in the brain. Now Cardan, on the other
hand, maintained that the brain was too hot. He found Cassanate's
treatment too closely fettered by his theory as to the causes of periodic
asthma, but he did not venture to exhibit his own course of treatment till
after he had gained some knowledge of the Archbishop's temper and habits.
He came to the conclusion that his patient was overwrought with the cares
of State, that he ate too freely, that he did not sleep enough, and that
he was of a temper somewhat choleric. Cardan set forth this view of the
case in a voluminous document, founding the course of treatment he
proposed to pursue upon the aphorisms of Galen. He altogether rejected
Cassanate's view as to the retention of the noxious humours in the head.
The Archbishop had the ruddy complexion of a man in good health, a
condition which could scarcely co-exist with the loading of the brain
with matter which would certainly putrify if retained for any long time.
Cardan maintained that the serous humour descended into the lungs, not by
the passages, but by soaking through the membranes as through linen.[148]
After describing the origin and the mode of descent of this humour, he
goes on to search for an auxiliary cause of the mischief, and this he
finds in the imperfect digestive powers of the stomach and liver. If the
cause lay entirely in the brain, how was it that all the cerebral
functions were not vitiated? In fine, the source of the disease lay, not
in the weakness of the brain, but in an access of heat, caused possibly by
exposure to the sun, by which the matter of the brain had become so
rarefied that it showed unhealthy activity in absorbing moisture from the
other parts. This heat, therefore, must be reduced.

To accomplish this end three lines of treatment must be followed. First, a
proper course of di