he was soon satisfied as to the issue, in that Mars and Saturn happened to be in conjunction (Möhsen, Vol. II., page 416). However, men were not wanting who courageously took up the battle against astrological delusions. Thus, for instance, the friend of Lorenzo of Medici, the learned Count Pico of Mirandola (1463-1494); also Girolamo Fracastori (1483-1553), who is known by his didactic poem on syphilis, opposed astrology. If we now ask how it was possible that a superstition like astrology could for centuries dominate Occidental medicine, and was even able to influence the best minds in its favor, an answer to this question will not be as difficult as might appear at first glance. The very best and the most enlightened minds are always particularly affected by what is enigmatical and mysterious in the phenomena of life. They perceive the narrow limits set to our cognition of nature much more acutely and deeply than the average mind. This consciousness of the insufficiency of our own knowledge, joined with an ardent desire after a broadening of our understanding, tends to turn the mind in strange directions. The result of clearer self-knowledge in this modern epoch of ours is an adverseness to any form of romantic fancy, and is likely to end in a sad resignation that may result in pessimism. But the middle ages, with their exuberant confidence and faith, their belief in wonders, and their romantic ideas, did not suffer to any great extent from scientific apathy. A sharply defined, mystic tendency helped to overcome what was inadequate in the cognition of nature. And for this reason do we find this mystic tendency prominent, especially in those representatives of that period who, owing to their mental capacity, were bound to perceive their defective insight into the manifestations of life much more intensely than this was felt by the average persons of narrower intellect. The conditions thus described, as well as the diagnostico-theoretical principles on which medicine and natural sciences were based in antiquity and in the middle ages, until late in the eighteenth century led many mentally gifted men to consider astrology rather a refuge from the current defective conception of natural phenomena than a false doctrine. VI INFLUENCE EXERTED UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF SUPERSTITION BY MEDICINE ITSELF