JEROME CARDAN 165 



desire to drain the cup of lustful pleasure ; not for the 

 life eternal, but to the enticements of lechery." 1 



At this time Gian Battista had gained the doctorate of 

 medicine at Pavia, and had made his contribution to 

 medical knowledge by the publication of an insignificant 

 tract, De cibis foetidis non edendis. Cardan was evidently 

 full of hope for his elder son's career, but Aldo seems to 

 have been a trouble from the first. Yet, in casting Aldo's 

 horoscope (probably at the time of his birth) Cardan pre- 

 dicts for him a flourishing future. 2 Never was there made 

 a worse essay in prophecy. Aldo's childhood had been 

 a sickly one. He had well-nigh died of convulsions, and 

 later on he had been troubled with dysentery, abscesses 

 of the brain, and a fever which lasted six months. More- 

 over, he could not walk till he was three years old. With 

 a weakly body, his nature seems to have put forth all 

 sorts of untoward growths. There is a story which Naud6 

 brings forward as part of his indictment against Cardan, 

 that the father being irritated beyond endurance by some 

 ill conduct of his younger son during supper, cut off his 

 ear by way of punishment. It was a most barbarous 

 act ; one going far beyond the range of any tradition of 

 the early patria potestas, which may have yet lingered in 

 Italy ; and scarcely calculated to bring about reformation 

 in the youth thus punished. In any case, Aldo went on 

 from bad to worse ; at one time his father found it neces- 

 sary to place him under restraint, and the last record of 

 him is that one in Cardan's testament, by which he was 

 disinherited. 



Gian Battista's failings were doubtless grave and 



1 Opera, torn. i. p. 614. 



" In casteris erit elegans, splendidus, humanus, gravis et qui ab 

 omnibus, potentioribusque, prsesertim probetur," Geniturarum 

 Exempla^ p. 464. 



