JEROME CARDAN is now standing on the brink of authorship. The very title
of his first book, _De Malo Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu_, gives
plain indication of the humour which possessed him, when he formulated his
subject and put it in writing. With his temper vexed by the persistent
neglect and insult cast upon him by the Milanese doctors he would
naturally sit down _con amore_ to compile a list of the errors perpetrated
by the ignorance and bungling of the men who affected to despise him, and
if his object was to sting the hides of these pundits and arouse them to
hostility yet more vehement, he succeeded marvellously well. He was
enabled to launch his book rather by the strength of private friendship
than by the hope of any commercial success. Whilst at Pavia he had become
intimate with Ottaviano Scoto, a fellow-student who came from Venice, and
in after times he found Ottaviano's purse very useful to his needs. Since
their college days Ottaviano's father had died and had left his son to
carry on his calling of printing. In 1536 Jerome bethought him of his
friend, and sent him the MS. of the treatise which was to let the world
learn with what little wisdom it was being doctored.[67]
Ottaviano seems to have expected no profit from this venture, which was
manifestly undertaken out of a genuine desire to help his friend, and he
generously bore all the costs. Cardan deemed that, whatever the result of
the issue of the book might be, it would surely be to his benefit; he
hazarded nothing, and the very publication of his work would give him at
least notoriety. It would moreover give him the intense pleasure of
knowing that he was repaying in some measure the debt of vengeance owing
to his professional foes. The outcome was exactly the opposite of what
printer and author had feared and hoped. The success of the book was rapid
and great.
Ottaviano must soon have recouped all the cost of publication; and, while
he was counting his money, the doctors everywhere were reading Jerome's
brochure, and preparing a ruthless attack upon the daring censor, who,
with the impetuosity of youth, had laid himself open to attack by the
careless fashion in which he had compiled his work. He took fifteen days
to write it, and he confesses in his preface to the revised edition that
he found therein over three hundred mistakes of one sort or another. The
attack was naturally led by the Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told
why this man, who was not good enough to practise by their sanction, was
good enough to lay down the laws for the residue of the medical world.
They heaped blunder upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the
wealth of invective characteristic of the learned controversy of the age.
Cardan was deeply humbled and annoyed. "For my opponents, seizing the
opportunity, took occasion to assail me through the reasoning of this
book, and cried out: 'Who can doubt that this man is mad? and that he
would teach a method and a practice of medicine differing from our own,
since he has so many hard things to say of our procedure.' And, as Galen
said, I must in truth have appeared crazy in my efforts to contradict this
multitude raging against me. For, as it was absolutely certain that either
I or they must be in the wrong, how could I hope to win? Who would take my
word against the word of this band of doctors of approved standing,
wealthy, for the most part full of years, well instructed, richly clad and
cultivated in their bearing, well versed in speaking, supported by crowds
of friends and kinsfolk, raised by popular approval to high position, and,
what was more powerful than all else, skilled in every art of cunning and
deceit?"
Cardan had indeed prepared a bitter pill for his foes, but the draught
they compelled him to swallow was hardly more palatable. The publication
of the book naturally increased the difficulties of his position, and in
this respect tended to make his final triumph all the more noteworthy.
It was in 1536 that Cardan made his first essay as an author.[68] The next
three years of his life at Milan were remarkable as years of preparation
and accumulation, rather than as years of achievement. He had struck his
first blow as a reformer, and, as is often the lot of reformers, his sword
had broken in his hand, and there now rested upon him the sense of failure
as a superadded torment. Yet now and again a gleam of consolation would
disperse the gloom, and advise him that the world was beginning to
recognize his existence, and in a way his merits. In this same year he
received an offer from Pavia of the Professorship of Medicine, but this he
refused because he did not see any prospect of being paid for his
services. His friend Filippo Archinto was loyal still, and zealous in
working for his success, and as he had been recently promoted to high
office in the Imperial service, his good word might be very valuable
indeed. He summoned his _protégé_ to join him at Piacenza, whither he had
gone to meet Paul III., hoping to advance Cardan's interests with the
Pope; but though Marshal Brissac, the French king's representative,[69]
joined Archinto in advocating his cause, nothing was done, and Jerome
returned disappointed to Milan.
In these months Cardan, disgusted by the failure of his late attack upon
the fortress of medical authority, turned his back, for a time, upon the
study of medicine, and gave his attention almost entirely to mathematics,
in which his reputation was high enough to attract pupils, and he always
had one or more of them in his house, the most noteworthy of whom was
Ludovico Ferrari of Bologna, who became afterwards a mathematician of
repute, and a teacher both at Milan and Bologna. While he was working at
the _De Malo Medendi_, he began a treatise upon Arithmetic, which he
dedicated to his friend Prior Gaddi; but this work was not published till
1539. In 1536 he first heard a report of a fresh and important discovery
in algebra, made by one Scipio Ferreo of Bologna; the prologue to one of
the most dramatic incidents in his career, an incident which it will be
necessary to treat at some length later on.
Cardan was well aware that his excursions into astrology worked to his
prejudice in public esteem, but in spite of this he could not refrain
therefrom. It was during the plentiful leisure of this period that he
cast the horoscope of Jesus Christ, a feat which subsequently brought upon
him grave misfortune; a few patients came to him, moved no doubt by the
spirit which still prompts people suffering from obscure diseases to
consult professors of healing who are either in revolt or unqualified in
preference to going to the orthodox physician. In connection with this
irregular practice of his he gives a curious story about a certain Count
Borromeo. "In 1536, while I was attending professionally in the house of
the Borromei, it chanced that just about dawn I had a dream in which I
beheld a serpent of enormous bulk, and I was seized with fear lest I
should meet my death therefrom. Shortly afterwards there came a messenger
to summon me to see the son of Count Carlo Borromeo. I went to the boy,
who was about seven years old, and found him suffering from a slight
distemper, but on feeling his pulse I perceived that it failed at every
fourth beat. His mother, the Countess Corona, asked me how he fared, and I
answered that there was not much fever about him; but that, because his
pulse failed at every fourth beat, I was in fear of something, but what it
might be I knew not rightly (but I had not then by me Galen's books on the
indications of the pulse). Therefore, as the patient's state changed not,
I determined on the third day to give him in small doses the drug called
_Diarob: cum Turbit_: I had already written my prescription, and the
messenger was just starting with it to the pharmacy, when I remembered my
dream. 'How do I know,' said I to myself, 'that this boy may not be about
to die as prefigured by the portent above written? and in that case these
other physicians who hate me so bitterly, will maintain he died through
taking this drug.' I called to the messenger, and said there was wanting
in the prescription something which I desired to add. Then I privately
tore up what I had written, and wrote out another made of pearls, of the
horn of unicorn,[70] and certain gems. The powder was given, and was
followed by vomiting. The bystanders perceived that the boy was indeed
sick, whereupon they called in three of the chief physicians, one of whom
was in a way friendly to me. They saw the description of the medicine, and
demanded what I would do now. Now although two of these men hated me, it
was not God's will that I should be farther attacked, and they not only
praised the medicine, but ordered that it should be repeated. This was the
saving of me. When I went again in the evening I understood the case
completely. The following morning I was summoned at daybreak, and found
the boy battling with death, and his father lying in tears. 'Behold him,'
he cried, 'the boy whom you declared to ail nothing' (as if indeed I could
have said such a thing); 'at least you will remain with him as long as he
lives.' I promised that I would, and a little later the boy tried to rise,
crying out the while. They held him down, and cast all the blame upon me.
What more is there to say? If there had been found any trace of that drug
_Diarob: cum Turbit_: (which in sooth was not safe) it would have been all
over with me, since Borromeo all his life would either have launched
against me complaints grave enough to make all men shun me, or another
Canidia, more fatal than African serpents, would have breathed poison upon
me."[71]
In this same year, 1536, Lucia brought forth another child, a daughter,
and it was about this time that Cardan first attracted the attention of
Alfonso d'Avalos, the Governor of Milan, and an intimacy began which,
albeit fruitless at first, was destined to be of no slight service to
Jerome at the crisis of his fortunes.[72] In the following year, in 1537,
he made a beginning of two of his books, which were subsequently found
worthy of being finished, and which may still be read with a certain
interest: the treatises _De Sapientia_ and _De Consolatione_. Of the
last-named, he remarks that it pleased no one, forasmuch as it appealed
not to those who were happy, and the wretched rejected it as entirely
inadequate to give them solace in their evil case. In this year he made
another attempt to gain admission to the College at Milan, and was again
rejected; the issue of the _De Malo Medendi_ was too recent, and it needed
other and more potent influences than those exercised by mere merit, to
appease the fury of his rivals and to procure him due status. But it would
appear that, in 1536 or 1537, he negotiated with the College to obtain a
quasi-recognition on conditions which he afterwards describes as
disgraceful to himself, and that this was granted to him.[73]
Whatever his qualifications may have been, Cardan had no scruples in
treating the few patients who came to him. The first case he notes is that
of Donato Lanza,[74] a druggist, who had suffered for many years with
blood-spitting, which ailment he treated successfully. Success of this
sort was naturally helpful, but far more important than Lanza's cure was
the introduction given by the grateful patient to the physician,
commending him to Francesco Sfondrato, a noble Milanese, a senator, and a
member of the Emperor's privy council. The eldest son of this gentleman
had suffered many months from convulsions, and Cardan worked a cure in his
case without difficulty. Shortly afterwards another child, only ten months
old, was attacked by the same complaint, and was treated by Luca della
Croce, the procurator of the College of Physicians, of which Sfondrato was
a patron. As the attack threatened to be a serious one, Della Croce
recommended that another physician, Ambrogio Cavenago, should be called
in, but the father, remembering Cardan's cure of Lanza, wished for him as
well. The description of the meeting of the doctors round the sick child's
bed, of their quotations from Hippocrates, of the uncertainty and
helplessness of the orthodox practitioners, and of the ready resource of
the free-lance--who happens also to be the teller of the story--is a
richly typical one.[75] "We, the physicians and the father of the child,
met about seven in the morning, and Della Croce made a few general
observations on death, for he knew that Sfondrato was a sensible man, and
he himself was both honoured and learned. Cavenago kept silence at this
stage, because the last word had been granted to him. Then I said, 'Do you
not see that the child is suffering from Opisthotonos?' whereupon the
first physician stood as one dazed, as if I were trying to trouble his
wits by my hard words. But Della Croce at once swept aside all uncertainty
by saying, 'He means the backward contraction of the muscles.' I confirmed
his words, and added, 'I will show you what I mean.' Whereupon I raised
the boy's head, which the doctors and all the rest believed was hanging
down through weakness, and by its own weight, and bade them put it into
its former position. Then Sfondrato turned to me, and said, 'As you have
discovered what the disease is, tell us likewise what is the remedy
therefor.' Since no one else spoke, I turned towards him and--careful lest
I should do hurt to the credit I had gained already,--I said, 'You know
what Hippocrates lays down in a case like this--_febrem convulsioni_'--and
I recited the aphorism. Then I ordered a fomentation, and an application
of lint moistened with linseed-oil and oil of lilies, and gave directions
that the child should be gently handled until such time as the neck
should be restored; that the nurse should eat no meat, and that the child
should be nourished entirely by the milk of her breast, and not too much
of that; that it should be kept in its cradle in a warm place, and rocked
gently till it should fall asleep. After the other physicians had gone, I
remember that the father of the child said to me, 'I give you this child
for your own,' and that I answered, 'You are doing him an ill turn, in
that you are supplanting his rich father by a poor one.' He answered, 'I
am sure that you would care for him as if he were your own, fearing naught
that you might thereby give offence to these others' (meaning the
physicians). I said, 'It would please me well to work with them in
everything, and to win their support.' I thus blended my words, so that he
might understand I neither despaired of the child's cure, nor was quite
confident thereanent. The cure came to a favourable end; for, after the
fourteenth day of the fever--the weather being very warm--the child got
well in four days' time. Now as I review the circumstances, I am of
opinion that it was not because I perceived what the disease really was,
for I might have done so much by reason of my special practice; nor
because I healed the child, for that might have been attributed to chance;
but because the child got well in four days, whereas his brother lay ill
for six months, and was then left half dead, that his father was so much
amazed at my skill, and afterwards preferred me to all others. That he
thought well of me is certain, because Della Croce himself, during the
time of his procuratorship, was full of spite and jealousy against me, and
declared in the presence of Cavenago and of Sfondrato, that he would not,
under compulsion, say a word in favour of a man like me, one whom the
College regarded with disfavour. Whereupon Sfondrato saw that the envy
and jealousy of the other physicians was what kept me out of the College,
and not the circumstances of my birth. He told the whole story to the
Senate, and brought such influence to bear upon the Governor of the
Province and other men of worship, that at last the entrance to the
College was opened to me."
Up to the time of his admission to the College, Jerome had never felt that
he could depend entirely upon medicine for his livelihood. He now
determined to publish his _Practica Arithmeticæ_, the book which he had
prepared _pari passu_ with the ill-starred _De Malo Medendi_. It seems to
have been thoroughly revised and corrected, and was finally published in
1539, in Milan; Cardan only received ten crowns for his work, but the
sudden fame he achieved as a mathematician ought to have set him on firm
ground. His friends were still working to secure for him benefits yet more
substantial. Alfonso d'Avalos, Francesco della Croce, the jurisconsult
whose name has already been mentioned, and the senator Sfondrato, were
doing their best to bring the physicians of the city into a more
reasonable temper, and they finally succeeded in 1539; when, after having
been denied admission for twelve years, Jerome Cardan became a member of
the College, and a sharer in all the privileges appertaining thereto.
Though Cardan was now a fully qualified physician, he spent his time for
the next year or two rather with letters than with medicine. He worked
hard at Greek, and as the result of his studies published somewhat
prematurely a treatise, _De Immortalitate Animorum_, a collection of
extracts from Greek writers which Julius Cæsar Scaliger with justice
calls a confused farrago of other men's learning.[76] He published also
about this period the treatise on Judicial Astrology, and the Essay _De
Consolatione_, the only one of his books which has been found worthy of an
English translation.[77] In 1541 he became Rector of the College of
Physicians, but there is no record of any increase in the number of his
patients by reason of this superadded dignity. A passage in the _De Vita
Propria_, written with even more than his usual brutal candour, gives a
graphic view of his manner of life at this period. "It was in the summer
of the year 1543, a time when it was my custom to go every day to the
house of Antonio Vicomercato, a gentleman of the city, and to play chess
with him from morning till night. As we were wont to play for one real, or
even three or four, on each game, I, seeing that I was generally the
winner, would as a rule carry away with me a gold piece after each day's
play, sometimes more and sometimes less. In the case of Vicomercato it was
a pleasure and nothing else to spend money in this wise; but in my own
there was an element of conflict as well; and in this manner I lost my
self-respect so completely that, for two years and more, I took no thought
of practising my art, nor considered that I was wasting all my
substance--save what I made by play--that my good name and my studies as
well would suffer shipwreck. But on a certain day towards the end of
August, a new humour seized Vicomercato (either advisedly on account of
the constant loss he suffered, or perhaps because he thought his decision
would be for my benefit), a determination from which he was to be moved
neither by arguments, nor adjurations, nor abuse. He forced me to swear
that I would never again visit his house for the sake of gaming, and I, on
my part, swore by all the gods as he wished. That day's play was our last,
and thenceforth I gave myself up entirely to my studies."[78]
But these studies unfortunately were not of a nature to keep the wolf from
the door; and Jerome, albeit now a duly qualified physician, and known to
fame as a writer on Mathematics far beyond the bounds of Italy, was
well-nigh as poor as ever. His mother had died several years before, in
1537; but what little money she may have left would soon have been wasted
in gratifying his extravagant taste for costly things,[79] and at the
gaming-table. He found funds, however, for a journey to Florence, whither
he went to see d'Avalos, who was a generous, open-handed man, and always
ready to put his purse at the service of one whom he regarded as an honour
to his city and country. There can be little doubt that he helped Cardan
liberally at this juncture. The need for a loan was assuredly urgent
enough. The recent resumption of hostilities between the French and the
Imperialists had led to intolerable taxation throughout the Milanese
provinces, and in consequence of dearth of funds in 1543, the Academy at
Pavia was forced to close its class-rooms, and leave its teachers unpaid.
The greater part of the professors migrated to Pisa; and the Faculty of
Medicine, then vacant, was, _pro formâ_, transferred to Milan. This chair
was now offered to Cardan. He was in desperate straits--a third child had
been born this year--and, though there must have been even less chance of
getting his salary paid than when he had refused it before, he accepted
the post, explaining that he took this step because there was now no need
for him to leave Milan, or danger that he would be rated as an itinerant
teacher. It is not improbable that he may have been led to accept the
office on account of the additional dignity it would give to him as a
practising physician. When, a little later on, the authorities began to
talk of returning to Pavia, he was in no mind to follow them, giving as a
reason that, were he to leave Milan, he would lose his stipend for the
Plat lectureship, and be put to great trouble in the transport of his
household, and perhaps suffer in reputation as well. The Senate was
evidently anxious to retain his services. They bade him consider the
matter, promising to send on a certain date to learn his decision; and, as
fate would have it, the question was conveniently decided for him by a
portent.
"On the night before the day upon which my answer was to be sent to the
Senate to say what course I was going to take, the whole of the house fell
down into a heap of ruins, and no single thing was left unwrecked, save
the bed in which I and my wife and my children were sleeping. Thus the
step, which I should never have taken of my own free will or without some
sign, I was compelled to take by the course of events. This thing caused
great wonder to all those who heard of it."[80]
This was in 1544. Jerome hesitated no longer, and went forthwith to Pavia
as Professor of Medicine at a salary of two hundred and forty gold crowns
per annum; but, for the first year at least, this salary was not paid;
and the new professor lectured for a time to empty benches; but, as he was
at this time engaged in the final stage of his great work on Algebra, the
leisure granted to him by the neglect of the students must have been most
acceptable. He published at this time a treatise called _Contradicentium
Medicorum_, and in 1545 his _Algebra_ or _Liber Artis Magnæ_ was issued
from the press by Petreius of Nuremberg. The issue of this book, by which
alone the name of Cardan holds a place in contemporary learning, is
connected with an episode of his life important enough to demand special
and detailed consideration in a separate place.
His practice in medicine was now a fairly lucrative one, but his
extravagant tastes and the many vices with which he charges himself would
have made short work of the largest income he could possibly have earned,
consequently poverty was never far removed from the household. Hitherto
his reputation as a man of letters and a mathematician had exceeded his
fame as a doctor; for, even after he had taken up his residence as
Professor of Medicine at Padua, many applications were made to him for his
services in other branches of learning. It was fortunate indeed that he
had let his reading take a somewhat eclectic course, for medicine at this
time seemed fated to play him false. At the end of 1544 no salary was
forthcoming at Pavia, so he abandoned his class-room, and returned to
Milan.
During his residence there, in the summer of 1546, Cardinal Moroni, acting
on behalf of Pope Paul III., made an offer for his services as a teacher
of mathematics, accompanied by terms which, as he himself admits, were not
to be despised; but, as was his wont, he found some reason for demur, and
ultimately refused the offer. In his Harpocratic vein he argued, "This
pope is an old man, a tottering wall, as it were. Why should I abandon a
certainty for an uncertainty?"[81] The certainty he here alludes to must
have been the salary for the Plat lectureship; and, as this emolument was
a very small one, it would appear that he did not rate at a high figure
any profits which might come to him in the future from his acceptance of
the Pope's offer; but, as he admits subsequently, he did not then fully
realize the benevolence of the Cardinal who approached him on the subject,
or the magnificent patronage of the Farnesi.[82] It is quite possible that
this refusal of his may have been caused by a reluctance to quit Milan,
the city which had treated him in such cruel and inhospitable fashion,
just at the time when he had become a man of mark. In the arrogance of
success it was doubtless a keen pleasure to let his fellow-townsmen see
that the man upon whom they had heaped insult after insult for so many
years was one who could afford to let Popes and Cardinals pray for his
services in vain. But whatever may have been his humour, he resolved to
remain in Milan; and, as he had no other public duty to perform except the
delivery of the Plat lectures, he had abundant leisure to spend upon the
many and important works he had on hand at this season.
Cardan had now achieved European fame, and was apparently on the high
road to fortune, but on the very threshold of his triumph a great sorrow
and misfortune befell him, the full effect of which he did not experience
all at once. In the closing days of 1546 he lost his wife. There is very
scant record of her life and character in any of her husband's
writings,[83] although he wrote at great length concerning her father; and
the few words that are to be found here and there favour the view that she
was a good wife and mother. That Jerome could have been an easy husband to
live with under any circumstances it is hard to believe. Lucia's life, had
it been prolonged, might have been more free of trouble as the wife of a
famous and wealthy physician; but it was her ill fortune to be the
companion of her husband only in those dreary, terrible days at Sacco and
Gallarate, and in the years of uncertainty which followed the final return
to Milan. In the last-named period there was at least the Plat lectureship
standing between them and starvation; but children increased the while in
the nursery, and manuscripts in the desk of the physician without
patients, and Lucia's short life was all consumed in this weary time of
waiting for fame and fortune which, albeit hovering near, seemed destined
to mock and delude the seeker to the end. Cardan was before all else a man
of books and of the study, and it is not rare to find that one of this
sort makes a harsh unsympathetic husband. The qualities which he
attributes to himself in his autobiography suggest that to live with a man
cursed with such a nature would have been difficult even in prosperity,
and intolerable in trouble and privation. But fretful and irascible as
Cardan shows himself to have been, there was a warm-hearted, affectionate
side to his nature. He was capable of steadfast devotion to all those to
whom his love had ever been given. His reverence for the memory of his
tyrannical and irascible father had been noted already, and a still more
remarkable instance of his fidelity and love will have to be considered
when the time comes to deal with the crowning tragedy of his life. If
Cardan had this tender side to his nature, if he could speak tolerant and
even laudatory words concerning such a father as Fazio Cardano, and show
evidences of a love strong as death in the fight he made for the life of
his ill-starred and unworthy son, it may be hoped--in spite of his almost
unnatural silence concerning her--that he gave Lucia some of that
tenderness and sympathy which her life of hard toil and heavy sacrifice so
richly deserved; and that even in the days when he sold her trinkets to
pay his gambling losses, she was not destined to weep the bitter tears of
a neglected wife. If her early married life had been full of care and
travail, if she died when a better day seemed to be dawning, she was at
least spared the supreme sorrow and disgrace which was destined to fall so
soon upon the household. Judging by what subsequently happened, it will
perhaps be held that fate, in cutting her thread of life, was kinder to
her than to her husband, when it gave him a longer term of years under the
sun.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] _De Libris Propriis_, Opera, tom. i. p. 102.
[68] Besides the _De Malo Medendi Usu_, he published in 1536 a tract upon
judicial astrology. This, in an enlarged form, was reprinted by Petreius
at Nuremburg in 1542.
[69] Cardan writes of Brissac: "Erat enim Brissacus Prorex singularis in
studiosis amoris et humanitatis."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 14.
[70] "Mirumque in modum venenis cornu ejus adversari creditur."--_De
Subtilitate_, p. 315. Sir Thomas Browne (_Vulgar Errors_, Bk. iii. 23)
deals at length with the pretended virtues of the horn, and in the
Bestiary of Philip de Thaun (_Popular Treatises on Science during the
Middle Ages_) is given an account of the many wonderful qualities of the
beast.
[71] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxiii. p. 105. He also alludes to this case
in _De Libris Propriis_ (Opera, tom. i. p. 65), affirming that the other
doctors concerned in the case raised a great prejudice against him on
account of his reputation as an astrologer. "Ita tot modis et insanus
paupertate, et Astrologus profitendo edendoque libros, et imperitus casu
illustris pueri, et modum alium medendi observans ex titulo libri nuper
edito, jam prope ab omnibus habebar. Atque hæc omnia in Urbe omnium
nugacissima, et quæ calumniis maximè patet."
[72] The founder of this family was Indico d'Avalos, a Spanish gentleman,
who was chosen by Alfonso of Naples as a husband for Antonella, the
daughter and heiress of the great Marchese Pescara of Aquino. This
d'Avalos Marchese dal Guasto was the grandson of Indico. He commanded the
advanced guard at the battle of Pavia, and took part in almost every
battle between the French and Imperialists, and went with the Emperor to
Tunis in 1535. Though he was a brave soldier and a skilful tactician, he
was utterly defeated by d'Enghien at Cerisoles in 1544. He has been taxed
with treachery in the case of the attack upon the messengers Rincon and
Fregoso, who were carrying letters from Francis I. to the Sultan during a
truce, but he did little more than imitate the tactics used by the French
against himself; moreover, neither of the murdered men was a French
subject, or had the status of an ambassador. D'Avalos was a liberal patron
of letters and arts, and was very popular as Governor of Milan. He was a
noted gallant and a great dandy. Brantôme writes of him--"qu'il était si
dameret qu'il parfumait jusqu'aux selles de ses chevaux."--He died in
1546.
[73] "Violentia quorundam Medicorum adactus sum anno MDXXXVI, seu XXXVII,
turpi conditione pacisci cum Collegio, sed ut dixi, postmodum dissoluta
est, anno MDXXXIX et restitutus sum integrè."--_De Vita Propria_, ch.
xxxiii. p. 105.
[74] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xl. p. 133.--He gives a long list of cases of
his successful treatment in _Opera_, tom. i. p. 82.
[75] There is a full account of this episode in _De Libris Propriis_, p.
128, and in _De Vita Propria_, ch. xl. p. 133.
[76] Exotericarum exercitationum, p. 987.
[77] _Cardanus Comforte, translated into Englishe_, 1573. It was the work
of Thomas Bedingfield, a gentleman pensioner of Queen Elizabeth.
[78] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 116.
[79] "Delectant me gladii parvi, seu styli scriptorii, in quos plus
viginti coronatis aureis impendi: multas etiam pecunias in varia pennarum
genera, audeo dicere apparatum ad scribendum ducentis coronatis non
potuisse emi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xviii. p. 57.
[80] _De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 15.
[81] "At ego qui, ut dixi, Harpocraticus sum dicebam:--Summus Pont:
decrepitus est: murus ruinosus, certa pro incertis derelinquam?"--_De Vita
Propria_, ch. iv. p. 15. It is quite possible that Paul III. may have
desired to have Cardan about him on account of his reputation as an
astrologer, the Pope being a firm believer in the influence of the
stars.--_Vide_ Ranke, _History of the Popes_ i. 166.
[82] "Neque ego tum Moroni probitatem, nec Pharnesiorum splendorem
intelligebam."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. iv. p. 15.
[83] In writing of his own horoscope (_Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 461) he
records that she miscarried thrice, brought forth three living children,
and lived with him fifteen years. He dismisses his marriage as follows:
"Duxi uxorem inexpectato, a quo tempore multa adversa concomitata
sunt."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 149. But in _De Rerum Subtilitate_,
p. 375, he records his grief at her death:--"Itaque cum a luctu dolor et
vigilia invadere soleant, ut mihi anno vertente in morte uxoris Luciæ
Bandarenæ quanquam institutis philosophiæ munitus essem, repugnante tamen
natura, memorque vinculi c[o=]jugalis, suspiriis ac lachrymis et inedia
quinque dierum, a periculo me vindicavi."