Of the dissolute lives of the Scotch, like the other clergy of these times, we may find ample proof in some of the contemporaneous medical works. We know, for example, from an old medical author, something of the inner life of the identical “pockie priest” who baptized James VI. In 1552, Dr. Jerome Cardan, the famous Italian physician, came from Milan to Edinburgh to visit professionally the high ecclesiastic in question—namely, John Hamilton, Archbishop of St. Andrews—who was suffering under severe and recurrent attacks of asthma. He travelled with all possible expedition, and in these “good olden times” the part of his journey from London to Edinburgh only took twenty-three days. Cardan has left us in his works a copy of the lengthy and very minute medical and hygienic directions which he drew up for the behoof of the archbishop. Besides giving him innumerable medical prescriptions, he lays down for him excellent rules regarding his food, drink, exercise, sleep, etc., down to the materials of which his bed and his pillows should be composed. He adds for the Archbishop’s guidance the following rule—“De Venere. Certe non est bona, neque utilis: ubi tamen contingat necessitas, debet uti ea inter duos somnos, secilicet post mediam noctem, et melius est exercere eam ter in sex diebus pro exemplo, ita ut singulis duobus diebus semel, quam bis in una die, etiam quod staret per decem dies.”[636] The quiet and matter-of-course style in which these rules are laid down and published proves only too strongly the dissolute life of some of the highest clergy in our land; and in order to appreciate the full force of this observation, it is necessary to remember that Cardan’s patient was the living head of the Scottish Roman Catholic church of that day—the Primate and Metropolitan of Scotland.[637] Perhaps still more unequivocal evidence of the scandalous profligacy of the Scottish clergy of these times is to be found in their own statutes, and in the legal documents of the country.