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]