JEROME CARDAN 267 



of notice that he did not allow this discursive humour, 

 which is not seldom a token of instability, to hold him 

 back from pursuing the supreme aim of his life, that is, 

 eminence in the art of Medicine. In his youth the 

 threats and persuasions of his father could not induce 

 him to take up Jurisprudence with an assured income 

 and abandon Medicine. At Sacco, at Gallarate, and 

 afterwards in Milan he was forced by the necessity of 

 bread-winning to use his pen in all sorts of minor sub- 

 jects that had no real fascination for him, but all his 

 leisure was devoted to the acquisition of Medical know- 

 ledge. Prudence as well as inclination had a share in 

 directing his energies into this channel, for a report, for 

 which no doubt there was some warrant, was spread 

 abroad that what skill he had lay entirely in the know- 

 ledge of Astrology ; and, as this rumour operated 

 greatly to his prejudice, 1 he resolved to perfect himself 

 in Medicine and free his reputation from this aspersion. 

 He had quarrelled violently with the physicians over 

 the case of Count Borromeo's child which died, and with 

 Borromeo himself, and, almost immediately after this, 

 he published his book, De Astrorum Judiciis, a step which 

 tended to identify him yet more closely with Astrology, 

 and to raise a cry against him in Milan, which he declares 

 to be the most scandal-mongering city in the Universe. 

 But it is clear that in this instance scandal was not far 

 wrong, and that Cardan himself was right in purging him- 

 self of the quasi science he ought never to have taken up. 

 Medicine, when Cardan began his studies, was be- 

 ginning to feel the effects of the revival of Greek learning. 

 With the restored knowledge of the language of Greece 

 there arose a desire to investigate the storehouses of 

 science, as well as those of literature, and the extravagant 

 1 De Vita Propria, ch. x. p. 32. 



