1883. Prowe's Life of Copernicus. 309
priest ; and the remedies with which he was conversant were of the milder kind provided in the pharmacopoeia. Moreover, his application to astronomy peculiarly fitted him, according to the ideas prevalent in those days, for application to medicine. Planetary conjunctions, it was firmly believed, powerfully affected the action of drugs ; the occurrence and course of diseases were included in die horoscope of the patient ; each part of the body had its appropriate constellation ; the choice between potions, pills, and electuaries depended on the situation of the moon in the zodiac. Medical students were accordingly compelled to acquaint themselves with the science of the celestial revolutions ; and the physician might be regarded in Copernicus as the natural development of the astronomer.
His residence at Padua lay, until quite recently, under a cloud of uncertainty. The fact was asserted by Papadopoli [1] in 1726, and found a place in all subsequent biographies of Copernicus ; but the decorative particulars added by the historian of the Patavian university having been shown to be wholly incorrect, it seemed unreasonable to rely on his discredited authority for the fundamental circumstance. Fortunately, however, in this instance destructive criticism was corrected by further research. The discovery by Signor Cittadella, of Ferrara, in 1876, of the doctoral diploma of the illustrious foreigner, proves that the older statements corresponded with, though they somewhat distorted, the real state of the case. This document [2] lets us know that Nicholas Copernicus ' of Prussia,' having studied at Bologna and at Padua, was decorated with the ring and berretta of a doctor in canon law, on the last day of May, 1503, in the episcopal palace at Ferrara. That a student of three universities should have gone for his degree to a fourth, where he did not attend a single lecture, or enrol himself as the pupil of a single professor, appears sufficiently strange. It was, however, at that period by no means an unusual proceeding. The expenses of graduation, both at Bologna and Padua, were large, and its conditions arduous. Ferrara offered facilities in both respects, of which Copernicus did not disdain to avail himself. With the completion of his medical studies at Padua, his prolonged academical career was finally brought to a close. He recrossed the Alps, and left Italy, to visit it no more, in the summer of 1505.
A new and totally untried life now opened before Copernicus.
