FEVER. 39 



always with some fear of early death. His mother never 

 thought he would live long 1 . In youth, to all the other 

 ailments Jerome suffered, there was added a dull, red 

 swelling on the left breast, which occasioned for some 

 time a dread of cancer 3 . In the year before his departure 

 for the university, when he was eighteen years old, he 

 suffered also a dangerous attack of illness. He had been 

 rambling through an August day among the suburbs and 

 gardens of Milan, and when he came home falsely ac- 

 counted for his absence by saying that he had dined with 

 a friend of his father's, Agostino Lanizario. It is the 

 same Lanizario who played the part of friendly critic upon 

 Jerome's early writings. After this walk the youth was 

 seized with a violent attack of illness 3 . For three days he 

 was in a fever, having only water for his food, and medi- 

 cine compounded by his father, who was not only lawyer 

 but physician also, which medicine he was to take four 

 times a day. An anthrax formed and broke over the 

 first false rib on the left side 4 . He thought in his de- 

 lirium that he was on the bed of Asclepiades, rising and 

 falling constantly between the floor and ceiling. He be- 

 came possessed of the belief that he should die. His 

 malady was closed by a violent sweat that resulted in the 

 youth's recovery, but his health, as I before said, re- 



1 De Vita Propr. p. 29. 2 Ibid. p. 31. 



3 Ibid. p. 28. * De Util. ex Adversis Cap. p. 431, 



