CHAPTER V 



AT this point it may not be inopportune to make a 

 break in the record of Cardan's life and work, and to 

 treat in retrospect of that portion of his time which he 

 spent in the composition of his treatises on Arithmetic 

 and Algebra. Ever since 1535 he had been working 

 intermittently at one or other of these, but it would 

 have been impossible to deal coherently and effectively 

 with the growth and completion of these two books 

 really the most important of all he left behind him 

 while chronicling the goings and comings of a life so 

 adventurous as that of the author. 



The prime object of Cardan's ambition was eminence 

 as a physician. But, during the long years of waiting, 

 while the action of the Milanese doctors kept him out- 

 side the bounds of their College, and even after this had 

 been opened to him without inducing ailing mortals to 

 call for his services, he would now and again fall into 

 a transport of rage against his persecutors, and of con- 

 tempt for the public which refused to recognize him as ,^ 

 a master of his art, and cast aside his medical books for 

 months at a time, devoting himself diligently to Mathe- "") 

 matics, the field of learning which, next to Medicine 



* 



attracted him most powerfully. His father Fazio was 

 a geometrician of repute and a student of applied mathe- 

 matics, and, though his first desire was to make his son 



69 



