166 JEROME CARDAN. 



foetid articles, as onions, garlic, or the like in food. 

 Jerome contradicted that assertion. His son was sur- 

 prised, and thought that he must intend some joke or 

 trick, for Galen was particular upon the point in more 

 places than one. Finding his father to be serious, Gian- 

 batista began next morning his little treatise, addressed 

 "by a Physician to Jerome Cardan, Physician of Milan." 

 He attended poor people and others, to whom it was 

 allowable to introduce him, and effected, as his father 

 declared afterwards, some great cures. He began also a 

 little tract " On Lightning," but that was not a kindred 

 subject, for it is evident, I think, that he himself was not 

 particularly quick or brilliant. 



" My nativity and that of my daughter," Jerome said, 

 in a book published after his return from England, " de- 

 cree to me many calamities and little good, but the 

 nativities of my sons promise me much good and little 

 harm 1 ." Libellous stars! The daughter, Clara, never 

 gave her father any pain. While he was practising in 

 Milan, after his return from his great journey, an ex- 

 cellent and wealthy young man, Bartolomeo Sacco, a 

 Milanese patrician, courted her, and married her, and 

 received with her from the hands of the great physician 

 a befitting dowry. In after life she never gave him any 

 1 Geniturarum Exemplar, p. 122. 



