168 JEROME CARDAN. 



consumption, or the man would not have recovered. 

 When Jerome had healed several in this way, he ventured 

 to write that he had cured people who suffered from con- 

 sumption and oppression of the breath. But as far as 

 concerns the consumptives, he tells us, " the physicians 

 spoke untruly who declared them to be afflicted by dis- 

 eases of another kind, and I spoke untruly in saying that 

 they were healed. But what I wrote was written in good 

 faith, for I was deceived by hope." After five years, for 

 example, in the case of Tibbold, Cardan explains that the 

 deceptive show of health broke down. Having returned 

 from church upon a holiday in rainy weather, he did not 

 change his wet clothes, but spent the entire night in 

 gambling. His complaint then returned upon him with a 

 fatal violence. He had been once apparently cured by 

 Cardan, once afterwards by another person, but so at last 

 he died of the disease. Upon close inquiry, Jerome was 

 informed by the widow that her husband's cough had at 

 no period been quite removed. Donate Lanza himself, 

 who had considered himself to have been cured by Cardan 

 of a consumption, a few weeks after he had introduced 

 him to Sfondrato, being sought by the authorities for some 

 offence, jumped out of window and fell into a fish-pond, 

 where he brought on himself a recurrence of his malady, 

 and speedy death. 



Plainer acknowledgment of error could not be made, 



