JEROME CARDAN 61 



drato saw that the envy and jealousy of the other 

 physicians was what kept me out of the College, and not 

 the circumstances of my birth. He told the whole 

 story to the Senate, and brought such influence to bear 

 upon the Governor of the Province and other men of 

 worship, that at last the entrance to the College was 

 opened to me." 



Up to the time of his admission to the College, 

 Jerome had never felt that he could depend entirely 

 upon medicine for his livelihood. He now determined 

 to publish his Practica Arithmetics, the book which he 

 had prepared part passu with the ill-starred De Malo 

 Medendi. It seems to have been thoroughly revised 

 and corrected, and was finally published in 1539, in 

 Milan ; Cardan only received ten crowns for his work, 

 but the sudden fame he achieved as a mathematician 

 ought to have set him on firm ground. His friends 

 were still working to secure for him benefits yet 

 more substantial. Alfonso d'Avalos, Francesco della 

 Croce, the jurisconsult whose name has already been 

 mentioned, and the senator Sfondrato, were doing their 

 best to bring the physicians of the city into a more 

 reasonable temper, and they finally succeeded in 1539 ; 

 when, after having been denied admission for twelve 

 years, Jerome Cardan became a member of the 

 College, and a sharer in all the privileges appertaining 

 thereto. 



Though Cardan was now a fully qualified physician, 

 he spent his time for the next year or two rath&r with 

 letters than with medicine. He worked hard at Greek, 

 and as the result of his studies published somewhat 

 prematurely a treatise, De Immortalitate Animorum, 

 a collection of extracts from Greek writers which Julius 

 Caesar Scaliger with justice calls a confused farrago 



