152 JEROME CARDAN. 



the offended physician, "I had left the man." But 

 chancing afterwards to pass, he was called in to look at a 

 sick nurse, whom in two days he cured; soon afterwards 

 the count's only child, a boy of seven, being ill, Jerome 

 was urgently invited to attend. Now it so happened that 

 on the preceding night that dreamy sage had been 

 troubled with a complex vision of a snake, which, as he 

 thought, portended danger to himself. When therefore 

 he went to Borromeo's house and found the child's pulse 

 pausing after every four beats, he said to himself, though 

 the disease seems light this boy will die. Having then 

 written a prescription, which contained one powerful 

 ingredient, and placed it in the hands of a messenger who 

 was about to take it to a shop to be made up, his dream 

 suddenly recurred to him. Its application was made very 

 obvious by the fact that Borromeo having added a snake 

 to his arms, possessed a country-house painted over with 

 vipers. The boy will die, he thought, and as the present 

 ailment seems to be so light, if it be found that any 

 active drug has been administered, it will be said after his 

 death that I have killed him. He therefore called back 

 the messenger, and substituted for his first prescription 

 another, containing only the most harmless ingredients 1 . 



i " Medicamentum quod vocatur Diarob, cum Turbit, propinare in 

 morsulis decreveram: et jam conscripseram, et nuncius ad pharmaco- 

 polam ire caeperat, recorder somnii, 'Quiscio,' mecum dixi, <ne hie 

 puer moriturus ex signo prsescripto ' revoco nuncium, qui non- 



