JEROME CARDAN 5 



persuaded by evil counsellors, drank a potion of abortive 

 drugs in order to produce miscarriage, 1 but Nature on 

 this occasion was not to be baulked. In recording the 

 circumstances of his birth he writes at some length in 

 the jargon of astrology to show how the celestial bodies 

 were leagued together so as to mar him both in body 

 and mind. "Wherefore I ought, according to every 

 rule, to have been born a monster, and, under the circum- 

 stances, it was no marvel that it was found necessary to 

 tear me from the womb in order to bring me into the 

 world. Thus was I born, or rather dragged from my 

 mother's body. I was to all outward seeming dead, with 

 my head covered with black curly hair. I was brought 

 round by being plunged in a bath of heated wine, a 

 remedy which might well have proved hurtful to any 

 other infant. My mother lay three whole days in labour, 

 but at last gave birth to me, a living child." 2 



The sinister influences of the stars soon began to 

 manifest their power. Before Jerome had been many 

 days in the world the woman into whose charge he had 

 been given was seized with the plague and died the same 

 day, whereupon his mother took him home with her. 

 The first of his bodily ailments, the catalogue of the 

 same which he subsequently gives is indeed a portentous 

 one, 3 was an eruption of carbuncles on the face in the 

 form of a cross, one of the sores being set on the tip of 



1 " Igitur ut ab initio exordiar, in pestilentia conceptus, matrem, 

 nondum natus (ut puto) mearum calamitatum participem, profugam 

 habui." Opera, torn. i. p. 618. 



" Mater ut abortiret medicamentum abortivum dum in utero 

 essem, alieno mandate bibit." De Utilitate, p. 347. 



2 De Vita Propria, ch. ii. p. 6. 



3 In one passage, De Utilitate, p. 348, he sums up his physical 

 misfortunes: " Hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum, 

 donee sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis 

 fimina perveni, pulsavi ostium sed non aperuere qui intro erant.'' 



