ny experiment there should seem to be an element of danger,
let it be performed gently, and little by little."[138] It is not
wonderful that the Archbishop, who doubtless heard all about Cardan's
asserted cure of phthisis from Cassanate, should have been eager to submit
his asthma to Cardan's skill. After acknowledging the deep debt of
gratitude which he, in common with the whole human race, owed to Cardan in
respect to the two discoveries aforesaid, Cassanate comes to the business
in hand, to wit, the Archbishop's asthma. Not content with giving a most
minute description of the symptoms, he furnishes Cardan also with a theory
of the operations of the distemper. He writes: "The disease at first took
the form of a distillation from the brain into the lungs, accompanied with
hoarseness, which, with the help of the physician in attendance, was cured
for a time, but the temperature of the brain continued unfavourable, being
too cold and too moist, so that certain unhealthy humours were collected
in the head and there remained, because the brain could neither
assimilate its own nutriment, nor disperse the humours which arose from
below, being weakened through its nutriment of pituitous blood. After an
attack of this nature it always happened that, whenever the body was
filled with any particular matter, which, in the form of substance, or
vapour, or quality, might invade the brain, a fresh attack would certainly
arise, in the form of a fresh flow of the same humour down to the lungs.
Moreover these attacks were found to agree almost exactly with the
conjunctions and oppositions of the moon."[139]

Cassanate goes on to say that his patient had proved somewhat intractable,
refusing occasionally to have anything to do with his medical attendants,
and that real danger was impending owing to the flow of humour having
become chronic. Fortunately this humour was not acrid or salt; if it were,
phthisis must at once supervene. But the Archbishop's lungs were becoming
more and more clogged with phlegm, and a stronger effort of coughing was
necessary to clear them. Latterly much of the thick phlegm had adhered to
the lungs, and consequently the difficulty of breathing was great.
Cassanate declares that he had been able to do no more than to keep the
Archbishop alive, and he fears no one would be able to work a complete
cure, seeing that the air of Scotland is so moist and salt, and that the
Archbishop is almost worried to death by the af