sometimes to go back and see how the best of them thought and acted amidst the embarrassments of imperfect knowledge.

There is a charming life by Henry Morley, of Cardan, the great Italian physician and algebraist, which gives us in accurate detail the daily routine of a doctor's days in the sixteenth century. In it is an account of Cardan's professional visit in 1551 to John Hamilton, archbishop of St. Andrew's, Scotland, and practically the ruler of that turbulent realm. Cardan's scientific opinion as to his patient is queer enough, but, as Morley remarks, it is probably not more amusing to us than will be our opinion in a like case to the smiling brother of our guild who may chance to read it at some remote future day. The physician of whom I now write was one who already dreaded bleeding, thought less of medicines than his fellows, and was, in fact, exceptionally acute. He did some droll things for the sick prelate, and had reasons yet more droll for what he did, but his practice was, as may happen on the whole, wiser than his reasons for its use. His patient was a man once bulky, but now thin, overworked, worried, subject to asthma, troubled with a bad stomach, prone to eat largely of coarse food, but indisposed to physical exercise. Cardan advised that the full, heated head, of which his patient much complained, should be washed night and morning with hot water in a warm room, and then subjected to a cold shower-bath. Next was to come a thorough dry rubbing, and rest for two hours. As to his asthma, he forbade him to subject himself to night air or rainy weather. He must sleep on silk, not feathers, and use a dry pillow of chopped straw or sea-weed, but by no means of feathers. He forbade suppers if too late, and asked the reverend lord to sleep ten hours, and even to take time from study or business and give it to bed. He was to avoid purgatives, to breakfast lightly, and to drink slowly at intervals four pints a day of new asses' milk. As to other matters, he was to walk some time in the shade at an early hour, and, discussing the time for the fullest meal, Cardan remarks that established habits as to this point are not to be lightly considered. His directions as to diet are many, reasonable, and careful. His patient, once stout, had become perilously thin. Turtle-soup and snail-broth would help him. Cardan insisted also on the sternest rules as to hours of work, need for complete rest, daily exercise, and was lucky enough to restore his patient to health and vigor. The great churchman was grateful, and seems to have well understood the unusual mental qualities of his physician. Nothing on the whole could be better than the advice Cardan gave, and the story is well worth reading as an illustration of the way in which a man of genius rises above the level of the routine of his day.

I might go farther back in time, and show by examples that the great fathers of medicine have usually possessed a like capacity, and learned much from experience of that which, emphasized by larger use and explained by scientific knowledge, has found its way into the text-books of our own day and become common property.

It appears to me from a large mental survey of the gains of my profession, that the English have above all other races contributed the most towards enforcing the fact that on the whole dietetics, what a man shall eat and drink, and also how he shall live as to rest, exercise, and work, are more valuable than drugs, and do not exclude their use.[1]

[Footnote 1: By this I mean that the physician, if forced to choose between absolute control of the air, diet, exercise, work, and general habits of a patient, and use of drugs without these, would choose the former, and yet there are cases where this decision would be a death-warrant to the patient.]

The active physician has usually little time nowadays to give to the older books, but it is still a valuable lesson in common sense to read, not so much the generalizations as the cases of Whytt, Willis, Sydenham, and others. Nearer our own day, Sir John Forbes, Bigelow, and Flint taught us the great lesson that many diseases are self-limited, and need only the great physician, Time, and reasonable dietetic care to get well without other aid.

There is a popular belief that we have learned this from homoeopathy, for the homoeopath, without knowing it, made for us on this matter ample experiments, and was as confident he was giving powerful medicines as we are that he was giving practically none. "He builded better than he knew," and certainly his results aided our ablest thinkers to reach the truth.

I have named one of the most illustrious of physicians, Sydenham, as among the great Englishmen who brought to their work the clearest perception of how nature was to be best aided. He will answer admirably to exemplify my meaning.

Sydenham was born in 1624, and lived in and through the wild periods of Charles I. and Cromwell, and was himself a stanch republican. He more than any other in his century decisively taught caution as to mere medication, and sedulously brought the clear light of common sense to bear upon the practice of his time. It is interesting to note, as his biographer remarks, that his theories were often as worthless as his practice was good. Experience taught him to do that for which he felt forced to find a reason, and the reason was often enough absurd. "The contrast gives a fine light and shadow effect in his biography."[2]

[Footnote 2: R.G. Latham, p. xxxvi.]

His systematic beliefs were ofttimes worthless, but great acuteness in observation was apt to lead him to do wisely in individual cases what was at variance with his creed. Speaking of Hippocrates, he says, "His system led him to assist nature, to support her when enfeebled and to the coercion of her when she was outrageous."

As to mere drugs, Sydenham used them in what was for his day an extremely moderate fashion, and sagaciously limited in the old and young his practice as to bleeding, which was then immensely in vogue. The courage required to treat smallpox, measles, and even other fevered states by cooling methods, must have been of the highest, as it was boldly in opposition to the public and private sentiment of his day. He had, too, the intelligence to learn and teach that the Jesuit bark, cinchona, was a tonic as well as the master of the agues, so common in the England of his time.

He is at his best, however, in his statement of how he treated individual cases, for then his written theories are given to the winds, or the practice is far beyond the creed in its clear common-sense value.

Thus, horseback exercise he constantly speaks of. He tells you of a friend who had been much dosed by many for dyspepsia, and how he bade him ride, and abandon drugs, and how, after a thousand miles of such riding, he regained health and vigor. See how this wise man touches the matter of gout: "For years a man has feasted; has omitted his usual exercises; has grown slow and sluggish; has been overstudious or overanxious, etc." Then he reasons about "smothering the animal spirits, which are the primary instruments of concoction," and so on, but at last he says, "We must look beyond medicines. Wise men do this in gout and in all other chronic diseases." And what does he advise? Here is the substance of what he says. A gouty man must be moderate, not too abstinent, so as to get weak. One meat is best; mixtures are bad. A milk diet "has prevailed," only bread being added, but it must be rigid and has its risks. He seems to have kept a nobleman on milk a year. Also there must be total abstinence from wine and all fermented liquors. Early bed hours and early rising are for the gouty. Then there come wise words as to worry and overwork. But, above all, the gouty must ride on horseback and exercise afoot. As to the wilder passions of men, he makes this strangely interesting