Jerome Cardan by William George Waters (ebook reader library TXT) 📖

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[48] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxi. p. 92. In taking the other view he writes: "Vitam ducebam in Saccensi oppido, ut mihi videbar, infelicissime."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 97.

[49] _De Utilitate_, p. 235.

[50] He gives a long and interesting sketch of his father-in-law in _De Utilitate_, p. 370.

[51] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxvi. p. 68; _Opera_, tom. i. p. 97.

[52] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xli. p. 149.

[53] _De Utilitate_, p. 350.

[54] _De Utilitate_, p. 357: "Nam in urbe nec collegium recipere volebat nec cum aliquo ex illis artem exercere licebat et sine illis difficillimum erat." He writes thus while describing this particular visit to Milan.

[55] Ill fortune seems to have pursued the whole family in their relations with learned societies. "Nam et pater meus ut ab eo accepi, diu in ingressu Collegii Jurisconsultorum laboravit, et ego, ut alias testatus sum, bis a medicorum Patavino, toties filius meus natu major, a Ticinensi, uterque a Mediolanensi rejecti sumus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 94.

[56] _De Utilitate_, p. 358.

[57] He became a priest, and died Archbishop of Milan in 1552. Cardan dedicated to him his first published book, _De Malo Medendi_.

[58] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 119.

[59] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxv. p. 67.

[60] The Xenodochium, which was originally a stranger's lodging-house. By this time places of this sort had become little else than _succursales_ of some religious house. The Governors of the Milanese Xenodochium were the patrons of the Plat endowment which Cardan afterwards enjoyed.

[61] "Hoc unum sat scio, ab ineunte aetate me inextinguibili nominis immortalis cupiditate flagrasse."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 61.

[62] "Minimo tamen honorario, et illud etiam minimum suasu cujusdam amici egregii praefecti Xenodochii imminuerunt; ita cum hujus recordor in mentem venit fabellae illius Apuleii de annonae Praefecto."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 64.

[63] _De Utilitate_, p. 351.

[64] The following gives a hint as to the treatment followed: "Referant leprosos balneo ejus aquae in qua cadaver ablutum sit, sanari."--_De Varietate_, p. 334. [65] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 121. This dream is also told in _De Libris Propriis_, Opera, tom. i. p. 64.

[66] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 121.


CHAPTER IV

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 _protege_ 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