58 JEROME CARDAN 



gain admission to the College at Milan, and was again 

 rejected ; the issue of the De Malo Medendi was too 

 recent, and it needed other and more potent influences 

 than those exercised by mere merit, to appease the fury 

 of his rivals and to procure him due status. But it 

 would appear that, in 1536 or 1537, he negotiated with 

 the College to obtain a quasi-recognition on conditions 

 which he afterwards describes as disgraceful to himself, 

 and that this was granted to him. 1 



Whatever his qualifications may have been, Cardan 

 had no scruples in treating the few patients who came 

 to him. The first case he notes is that of Donate 

 Lanza, 2 a druggist, who had suffered for many years 

 with blood-spitting, which ailment he treated success- 

 fully. Success of this sort was naturally helpful, but 

 far more important than Lanza's cure was the introduc- 

 tion given by the grateful patient to the physician, com- 

 mending him to Francesco Sfondrato, a noble Milanese, 

 a senator, and a member of the Emperor's privy council. 

 The eldest son of this gentleman had suffered many 

 months from convulsions, and Cardan worked a cure in 

 his case without difficulty. Shortly afterwards another 

 child, only ten months old, was attacked by the same 

 complaint, and was treated by Luca della Croce, 

 the procurator of the College of Physicians, of which 

 Sfondrato was a patron. As the attack threatened to 

 be a serious one, Della Croce recommended that another 

 physician, Ambrogio Cavenago, should be called in, but 

 the father, remembering Cardan's cure of Lanza, wished 



1 "Violentia quorundam Medicorum adactus sum anno 

 MDXXXVI, seu XXXVII, turpi conditione pacisci cum Collegio, 

 sed ut dixi, postmodum dissoluta est,anno MDXXXIX et restitutus 

 sum integre." De Vita Propria, ch. xxxiii. p. 105. 



2 De Vita Propria, ch. xl. p. 133. He gives a long list of cases 

 of his successful treatment in Opera, torn. i. p. 82. 



