OPINION OF PHYSIC AS A TRADE. 283 



" how much gold I have earned by my art, I fear that 

 greater than the praise of my success would be the censure 

 of my prodigality." At the same time, he recorded that 

 he had cured more than ten thousand patients. 



Nevertheless, except as a study, he did not like his pro- 

 fession. Its intellectual part had charms for him ; but as 

 a trade, as it was carried on in his day, with its internal 

 wars and jealousies, and with the too-frequent meanness 

 of its relations with the external public, he abhorred it 

 altogether. "If I had money to earn," he said, " I 

 could earn it as a doctor, and in no other way. But that 

 calling of all others (except the glory that attends it) is 

 completely servile, full of toil, and (to confess the truth) 

 unworthy of a high-spirited man, so that I do not at all 

 marvel that the art used to be peculiar to slaves 1 ." 



Cardan's household at Bologna was established on 

 a moderate scale, with very few domestics, and two 

 readers or secretaries; he had of late usually maintained 

 several readers in his house. His general affairs also 

 mended almost from the first. Backed by his friends the 

 cardinals, it was not only in Bologna that he found his 

 prospects brightening. In September, 1563, nearly a 



1 De Libris Propriis. Lib. ult. Op. Tom. i. p. 131. " Si opes pa- 

 randse erant, medica arte, non aliter parare potuissem: at ea, si qua 

 alia (gloria quoe illam comitatur excepta) tota servilis est, plenaque 

 laboribus, et (ut vere fatear) ingenuo viro indigna, ut non mirer olim 

 servorum fuisse hoc exercitum." 



