GIANBATISTA. 165 



much trouble after two rejections obtained his degree at 

 Pa via, practised at Milan under his father's auspices, but 

 even then it was not easy to procure his reception into 

 the Milanese College of Physicians 1 . 



This son, in spite of his father's praises and fond par- 

 tiality, does not seem to have been particularly clever. 

 His simplicity verged, perhaps, upon stupidity; he had 

 acquired that taste for dice which Jerome himself only 

 set aside when he had attained the position sought so 

 restlessly; he had a taste not acquired at home, for he 

 was a glutton. Certainly he and Aldo gave Cardan 

 much trouble after his return ; now, he says, he was 

 distressed by one, now by another, and sometimes by 

 both at once. Aldo was becoming very fast a hopeless 

 reprobate. Gianbatista wrote a very little book while he 

 was in his father's house at Milan, but it did not go to 

 press during his lifetime. It was " Upon the fetid foods 

 not to be eaten 2 ," and arose out of the domestic supper- 

 talk. Upon the appearance of the usual salad, the young 

 physician threw out a professional remark concerning 

 onions, that Galen had forbidden any physician to use 



De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 92. 



2 Authorities for the preceding will be cited in the sequel. The ac- 

 count of the origin of Gianbatista's book is taken from the introduc- 

 tion to the book itself, De Cibis foetidis non edendis, appended by 

 Cardan to the first edition of the work De Utilitate ex Adversis 

 Capienda. 



