144 JEROME CAKDAN. 



cheap means of communication between Venice and 

 Milan. 



It was a clever book, denouncing seventy-two errors in 

 practice. Such errors were the total denial of wine to 

 the sick 1 , the denial of fish, and the allowance of flesh to 

 people sick of fever 2 , the belief prevalent in many quar- 

 ters that there could be found one mode of cure for all 

 diseases 3 , and the doctrine that no patient should be bled 

 while suffering under acute pain 4 a woful sentence to 

 some sentence of death, for example, to the man tor- 

 mented by the agonies of an acute inflammation of the 

 peritoneum. He taught that to do nothing with physic 

 was much better than to do too much, and urged the 

 great number of things that have to be considered before 

 a man desiring to act rightly should set his hand to a 

 prescription 5 . The book was clever, and was of a kind 

 to meet with rapid sale. 



It did sell rapidly, but its appearance plunged the luck- 

 less author into new distress. It had not been long sub- 

 ject to criticism before Cardan was made aware of so 

 many petty faults in matter, style, and grammar, that any 

 pride he may have himself had in his work when he sent 



1 De Malo Medendi Usu (Venet. 1536), cap. vi. p. 13. 



2 Ibid. cap. x. p. 18. 3 Ibid. cap. xiv. p. 22. 

 * Ibid. cap. xl. p. 48. 



5 So he defines the spirit of the book in his second work, De Libris 

 Propriis, p. 29. 



