DOCTOR OF MEDICINE. 71 



for him, and was his business, to acquire. The barette 

 was of an ecclesiastical form, and signified that he was 

 consecrated as a priest to science, and by its name 

 (bi-rect), twice right, some thought it also signified that 

 teachers ought to be correct in practice as in theory. By 

 the ring he was espoused to his profession. The kiss was 

 the symbol of the brotherhood to which he was admitted, 

 and the peace and harmony that should prevail among all 

 fellow-labourers in art or science. Then in the cathedral 

 he was ushered by the bedel formally from a seat by his 

 presenters to a seat by the prior, further symbolising that, 

 as a man of learning, he was qualified to sit among the 

 princes of the earth. So Jerome was made a doctor in 

 the famous University of Padua. He was then twenty- 

 five years old. 



Having obtained this qualification. Cardan, without 

 loss of time, proceeded to establish himself in practice. 

 An opening was found for him at Sacco, to which place 

 he went, by the advice and with the help of a zealous 

 friend, a physician of Padua, Francisco Buonafede 1 .'j3uona- 

 fede had been a warm promoter in the university of Car- 

 dan's claim to a degree. He himself held rank at Padua 

 between the years 1524 and 1526 as the first of the two 

 extraordinary professors of the Theory of Medicine, his 



i De Ut. ex Adv. Cap. Lib. iii. p. 431. De Libris Propr. (1557) 

 p. 12. 



