208 JEROME CARDAN. 



connexion with the history of Mathematics. The whole 

 story of this book I shall attempt now to tell in a connected 

 way. The work in question is Cardan's Book of the Great 

 Art his Algebra a volume so especially important, and 

 begotten in so quaint a way, that whether I wished this 

 narrative to be read chiefly for information or amusement, 

 it would equally be fit that it should therein be put pro- 

 minently forward. 



That a long chapter upon Algebra should be one of the 

 most essential parts in the biography of a physician, is a 

 fact perfectly characteristic of the state of learning in the 

 sixteenth century. Physic was then allied not only with 

 chemistry, but had an alliance equally strong with alchemy, 

 astrology, and mathematics. There is a relic of this old 

 state of things left to us in the continued imputation of a 

 well-known astrological almanac to Francis Moore, Phy- 

 sician. The first book of algebra published in this country, 

 entitled the Whetstone of Witte, which is the seconde 

 parte of Arithmetike, by Robert Recorde, describes its 

 author (he died in the Fleet Prison) as " teacher of mathe- 

 matics and practitioner in physic at Cambridge 1 ." A more 



1 Robert Recorde taught mathematics at Oxford, and was admitted 

 to practise physic afterwards at Cambridge. I cannot precisely verify 

 the above reference, which I adopt from Button's Mathematical Dic- 

 tionary; it may be correct. In the first edition of " The Whetstone of 

 Witte" the only one I have seen the author, whose name is not on 

 the title-page, writes himself in the dedication, " Robert Recorde, Phy- 

 sitian," only. He was a man abounding in inventions, the first ven- 



