Summing up this whole matter, we may agree with Jourdan, who has examined all the opinions of these writers, and who, in his treatise published in 1826, concluded that all symptoms which had been hitherto connected with syphilis had been known and described from the remotest antiquity, but were not supposed to proceed from a common source, and to be attached to the same cause, until after the close of the fifteenth century.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE OCCULT SCIENCES ON THE MEDICINE OF THIS PERIOD.
Most of the partisans of occult science were restless minds, such as are found in all ages, who chafed under the yoke of authority, and who practiced as well as deduced their lines of thought and conduct in accordance with their own ideas. Some of these men did not lack in sagacity, imagination, or audacity, but almost all of them lacked in consistency of idea and dignity of thought. Most of them lived isolated lives, apart from each other and from the rest of the world, and were, to a large extent, what we would now regard as "cranks." While they made a wide departure from accredited doctrine, they depended upon imagination rather than upon reason. This happened to be a period, however, when such men achieved great notoriety,—more so than the same class of individuals have done since their time.
Cornelius Agrippa (born in 1486) was an early promoter of occult science. He came of a noble family of Cologne, received the best éducation of his time, was a man of varied attainments, great inconsistency in conduct, and a caustic humor which everywhere made him enemies and prevented him from having any settled abode. He wandered from place to place, sometimes honored with the favor of the nobility and sometimes plunged into extreme misery. He early became a secretary in the court of Emperor Maximilian I, and under that monarch distinguished himself in the army by such bravery as to win him spurs as a knight. Soon disgusted with the profession of arms, he devoted himself to law and medicine, but his intemperate pen soon drew him into quarrels and persecution. At Dole he fell out with the monks; at Paris and Turin he compromised himself with the theologians; at Metz he incurred the animosity of the Jacobins for attacking the prevailing opinion that St. Ann had three husbands. He became a vagabond and almost a beggar in Germany, England, and Switzerland, and then went to Lyons, where the mother of Francis I, who was then Queen Regent, made him her physician. He soon lost favor here, and was disgraced and banished; then he went to the Low Countries, where he was imprisoned on account of his treatise on The Vanity of the Sciences. Afterward he returned to Lyons, was imprisoned anew, for an old libel against his former patron, and finally died in the hospital of Grenoble, in 1535, at the age of about fifty. His treatise on The Vanity of the Sciences made him most trouble, and showed best both his bitterness of spirit and the extent of his learning. Herein he laid down the paradox, which was later renewed and sustained by Rousseau, that there is nothing more pernicious and injurious to common life, or more pestilential to the salvation of souls, than the arts and sciences. He founded this thesis on Scriptural authority, and supported it by profane testimony.
The conclusions which Agrippa drew were not so strange to the eyes of his contemporaries as they are to ours. Long before him, men of character and attainments, such as Pic de la Mirandola and Bessarion, had attempted to introduce the Platonic idea, that the best means of acquiring science and truth were introspective. They were, moreover, persuaded that a great number of phenomena and events have their origin in astral influences. From this system to the extravagance of the Cabal * is but a step; indeed, the Christian doctrine, that events and phenomena are influenced by the direct intervention of the deity or of the devil, is but a small transposition. The cabalistic theory, summed up, was that all the events of life and all the phenomena of nature proceed from influences which gods, devils, or the stars exercised on the "archetype"'—that is, on the essential spirit, or substance. He who could withdraw his spirit possessed supernatural faculties. The day and the hour of birth, according to this view, were under the domination of particular stars and each of the principal members of the body was supposed to correspond with some planet or constellation. This is the fundamental idea underlying the pictures—which are still to be found on almanacs used by quack-medicine firms—of the individual whose interior is so completely and uncomfortably exposed, while around him are arranged the signs of the zodiac, with indications as to which part of the body is governed by each.
* Cabal, or Kabbalah: A theosophieal or mystic speculative
system, of Hebrew origin, which flourished from the tenth to
the sixteenth century. It included a mystic theosophy and
cosmogony, attributing to deity neither will, desire, nor
action, but teaching that from it emanated wisdom, grace,
intellect, power, beauty, firmness, and other attributes. It
also ascribed hidden meanings to the sacred Hebrew writings
and words. Even in the letters and forms of the sacred words
the followers of the cabal pretended to find wonderful and
hidden meanings; hence the modern expression "cabalistic."
The teachings of the cabal were esoteric, of course, and
inculcated mysticism and occultism in everything, but
appear to have been more or less influenced by neoplatonism.
Occult philosophy, built upon this foundation, was divided into four branches: theosophy, to which a man raised himself by prayer; magic, or the art of controlling demons; astrology, or the art of reading future events by the stars; and alchemy, which teaches the secret of extracting the essence or the archetype of substances,—i.e., virtually the secret of the philosopher's stone, by which metals were to be transmuted and then abolished.
And so the errors of science, the prejudices of the superstitious, the excitement of the religious, and the cupidity of the rich and powerful, all concurred to propagate the faults of the cabal at the close of the Middle Ages. Never were there seen so many sorcerers, astrol-ogists, and alchemists; never were prophecies, visions, and prodigies so common. Whatever happened, it was pretended that it had been announced by some previous sign, or that it was a revelation of the future. This particular kind of folly persisted in Germany longer than in any other part of the world. Even Martin Luther seemed to share many of the cabalistic views, and his alleged struggle with the devil, his adventure with the inkstand, and so on, contributed much to spread them, and were, perhaps, the most prominent illustrations of their general acceptance. Surely, these were the Dark Ages.
Jerome Cardan was born at Pavia in 1501. His life, like that of Agrippa, was one of vicissitude and inconsistency. Being the idol of his mother and the detestation of his father produced a peculiar effect upon his character. When he began to study he made rapid progress, and at the age of twenty-two was able to discuss publicly all questions. About two years later he received his doctor's hat. He practiced medicine in various places until he was thirty-three, and was then made professor of mathematics at Milan. He occupied this position but two years, then traveled in Germany, France, and England, and returning to Italy was imprisoned for debt in Bologna, and finally obtained a pension from the pope, in Rome, where he died in 1556. He was a man of great attainments and sagacity; his literary style was dignified, and, if he had not developed such a taste for the marvelous, such inconceivable credulity and superstition, and such vanity and boasting, he would have been a remarkable character in his age. Leibnitz said of him: "Notwithstanding his faults, Cardan was a great man and, without his defects, would have been incomparable." He wrote extensively on philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. Sometimes he admitted to his writings the most absurd statements of visions, etc., and again affirmed that he had never devoted himself to cabalistic art, blamed those who practiced it, and jeered at those who believed in it. He wrote extensively on chiromancy. For his own follies and misfortunes he apologized, attributing them all to the influences of the stars.