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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.
Funds would be provided generous enough to allow the physician to travel post the whole of the journey, and the goodwill of all the rulers of the states en route would be enlisted in his favour. Cassanate finishes by fixing the end of January 1552 as a convenient date for the rendezvous in Paris, and, as time and place accorded with Cardan's wishes, he wrote to Cassanate accepting the offer.
De Vita Propria, ch. xlv. p. 175. The day before he quitted Lyons with Cassanate, a school-master came to ask for advice, which Cardan gave gratis.
Moreover at this juncture he seems to have been strongly moved to augment the fame which he had already won in Mathematics and Medicine by some great literary achievement, and he worked diligently with this object in view. At the beginning of November 1551, a letter came to him from Cassanate, a Franco-Spanish physician, who was at that time in attendance upon the Archbishop of St.
Shortly afterwards Guglielmo Cassanate, the Archbishop's physician, arrived in Lyons and brought with him three hundred other golden crowns, which he handed to me, in order that I might make the journey with him to Scotland, offering in addition to pay the cost of travel, and promising me divers gifts in addition. Thus, making part of our journey down the Loire, I arrived at Paris.
It is only remembered because Cardan has inserted therein, somewhat incongruously, that account of his asserted cures of phthisis which Cassanate 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.
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 Cassanate, 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.
Cardan makes no direct mention of any other physician in Scotland besides Cassanate; but the Archbishop would certainly have a body physician in attendance during Cassanate's absence. "Per totam tunicam sicut in linteis." Opera, tom. ix. p. 128. "Accipe testudinem maximam et illam incoque in aqua, donec dissolvatur, deinde abjectis corticibus accipiantur caro, et ossa et viscera omnia mundata."
Moreover these attacks were found to agree almost exactly with the conjunctions and oppositions of the moon." 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.
We can only add, that this war continued with great violence for ten years, during the governments of Don Pedro Portel de Cassanate, and Don Francisco de Meneses, as the successes of Clentaru are only incidentally mentioned in any of the writers belonging to this period.
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