146 JEKOME CAKDAN. 



Cardan, it could be urged against him not only that he 

 was not recognised by the local College of Physicians, 

 but that he was an eccentric man who would imperil the 

 lives of his patients by rash crotchets of his own. He was 

 a poor man, maddened by poverty, struggling against men 

 high in repute and rich. He was a young man complain- 

 ing of his elders 1 . Rivals and enemies looked grave and 

 shrugged their shoulders, merely pointing out that the 

 author of a book " On the Bad Practice of Medicine in 

 Common Use" might have a better practice of his own; 

 but from the very title of his work it was obvious as 

 the public generally could but admit that he opposed 

 singly the experience and learning of the whole profes- 

 sion. He, too, a young man, who, as they all knew, was 

 a lecturer upon geography, geometry, arithmetic, and 



architecture. 



1 De Libris Propr. (ed. 1557) p. 30. I must quote part of his own 

 account of the misfortunes that attended this first literary venture: 

 " Sed et longe aliter commodum, quod expectabamus ex illis libellis, nam 

 non parvam retardationem attulit ad gloriam in arte consequendam. 

 Nacti nanque aemuli ex argumento libri occasionem, dicebant, Nunquid 

 modo dubitatis hunc insanire? aliumque medendi modum aliamque, 

 quam nos, medicinam profiteri, cum in tot rebus ritum nostrum accuset? 

 Itaque merito, ut dicebat Galenus, qui tot insanientibus contradicere 

 niterer, insanire visus sum: cum enim necessarium esset me vel illos 

 aberrare quis mihi crederet contra tot probatos usu viros, divites, senes 

 magna ex parte, nee mediocriter eruditos, cultos restibus, ornatos 

 moribus, facundia vulgari prseditos, amicis atque affinitatibus potentes, 

 auraque populari in sublime elatos, inde, quod maximum erat, tot 

 artibus ad cavendum ad fallendumque instructos. Ego vero pannosus, 

 ita ut mihi non conveniret illud, Vestibus inquam homini surgit bona 

 fama decusque. Itaque egregio hoc meo invento pene fame perii." 



