d 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 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 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 vie