CHAPTER IV 



JEROME CARDAN is now standing on the brink of 

 authorship. The very title of his first book, De Malo 

 Recentiorum Medicorum Medendi Usu, gives plain indi- 

 cation of the humour which possessed him, when he 

 formulated his subject and put it in writing. With 

 his temper vexed by the persistent neglect and insult 

 cast upon him by the Milanese doctors he would 

 naturally sit down con amore to compile a list of the 

 errors perpetrated by the ignorance and bungling of 

 the men who affected to despise him, and if his object 

 was to sting the hides of these pundits and arouse them 

 to hostility yet more vehement, he succeeded marvel- 

 lously well. He was enabled to launch his book rather 

 by the strength of private friendship than by the hope 

 of any commercial success. Whilst at Pavia he had 

 become intimate with Ottaviano Scoto, a fellow-student 

 who came from Venice, and in after times he found 

 Ottaviano's purse very useful to his needs. Since their 

 college days Ottaviano's father had died and had left 

 his son to carry on his calling of printing. In 15 36 Jerome 

 bethought him of his friend, and sent him the MS. of 

 the treatise which was to let the world learn with what 

 little wisdom it was being doctored. 1 

 . Ottaviano seems to have expected no profit from this 



1 De Libris Propriis, Opera, torn. i. p. 102. 



