52 JEROME CARDAN 



venture, which was manifestly undertaken out of a 

 genuine desire to help his friend, and he generously 

 bore all the costs. Cardan deemed that, whatever 

 the result of the issue of the book might be, it would 

 surely be to his benefit ; he hazarded nothing, and the 

 very publication of his work would give him at least 

 notoriety. It would moreover give him the intense 

 pleasure of knowing that he was repaying in some 

 measure the debt of vengeance owing to his professional 

 foes. The outcome was exactly the opposite of what 

 printer and author had feared and hoped. The success 

 of the book was rapid and great. 



Ottaviano must soon have recouped all the cost of 

 publication ; and, while he was counting his money, the 

 doctors everywhere were reading Jerome's brochure, 

 and preparing a ruthless attack upon the daring censor, 

 who, with the impetuosity of youth, had laid himself 

 open to attack by the careless fashion in which he had 

 compiled his work. He took fifteen days to write it, 

 and he confesses in his preface to the revised edition 

 that he found therein over three hundred mistakes of 

 one sort or another. The attack was naturally led by 

 the Milanese doctors. They demanded to be told why 

 this man, who was not good enough to practise by their 

 sanction, was good enough to lay down the laws for the 

 residue of the medical world. They heaped blunder 

 upon blunder, and held him up to ridicule with all the 

 wealth of invective characteristic of the learned con- 

 troversy of the age. Cardan was deeply humbled and 

 annoyed. " For my opponents, seizing the opportunity, 

 took occasion to assail me through the reasoning of this 

 book, and cried out : ' Who can doubt that this man is 

 mad ? and that he would teach a method and a practice 

 of medicine differing from our own, since he has so many 



