160 JEROME CARDAN 



arcana." The next year he produced only a few medical 

 trifles, but in 1557 he brought out two other scientific 

 works which he characterizes as admirable one the Ars 

 parva curandi, and the other a treatise De Urinis. In 

 the same year he published the book which, in forming 

 a judgment of him as a man and a writer, is perhaps as 

 valuable as the De Vita Propria and the De Utilitate, 

 to wit the De Libriis Propriis. This work exists in 

 three forms : the first, a short treatise, " cui titulus 

 est ephemerus," is dedicated to " Hieronyrnum Carda- 

 num medicum, affinem suum," and has the date of 1543. 

 The second has the date of 1554, and, according to 

 Maude", was first published " apud Gulielmum Rovillium 

 sub scuto Veneto, Lugduni, 1557." The third was 

 begun in I56O, 1 and contains comments written in sub- 

 sequent years. The first is of slight interest, the 

 second is a sort of register of his works, amplified from 

 year to year, while the third has more the form of a 

 treatise, and presents with some degree of symmetry 

 the crude materials contained in the first. Having 

 finished with his writings up to the year 1564, Cardan 

 lapses into a philosophizing strain, and opens his dis- 

 course with the ominous words, " Sed jam ad institutum 

 revertamur, deque ipso vitae humanae genere aliquo 

 dicamus." He begins with a disquisition on the worth- 

 lessness of life, and repeats somewhat tediously the story 

 of his visit to Scotland. He gives a synopsis of all 

 the sciences he had ever studied Theology, Dialectics, 

 Arithmetic, Music, Optics, Astronomy, Astrology, Geo- 

 metry, Chiromancy, Agriculture, Medicine, passing on 

 to treat of Magic, portents and warnings, and of his own 

 experience of the same at the crucial moments of his 



1 Opera, torn. i. p. 96. " Annus hie est Salutis millesimus quingen- 

 tesimus ac sexagesimus." 



